Journal of the Plague Years

A website run and written by one man, pontificating to the world, may be an exercise in self-indulgence. It may just also be that he is exercising not only his right, but his duty, to speak Truth to Power with the only means that he has at his disposal.

The self-imposed message of this site is that the physical fabric of our world and the political fabric of our society are in serious and possibly immediate jeopardy. Except that 'imposed' is the wrong word, since I keep going off-message.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's recent 'Sharia is inevitable' speech, and events surrounding it, may not have a bearing on the dangers facing us (or, then again, perhaps they do) but I believe that they're important to the way our view of ourselves as British is going to develop. So, in a moment of self-indulgence gone a bit mad, I've gathered some of my (own) postings from around the time of ABC's speech. They represent one man's thinking around the time, not a report of the speech. (I haven't deleted these postings from their original pages; so they are duplicated here.)

Before the speech:

• Project Kalima: Brilliant!
• Immigration and The Bishop Of Rochester.
• Police Protection...
• Sharia On Television.

The speech and after:

• Accommodating Sharia within the British legal system.
• Multiculturalism Under Attack.
• The Most Shameful Posting I've Ever Made. But I'm Tired Of Being Censored.
• Multiculturalism could have been Enlightenment manifest.
• Canterbury And The Hand Of Peace.

In Chronological (not blogological) order.

Project Kalima: Brilliant!

22 November 2007 .

Sometimes the papers report something which is simply excellent news (without, so far as I can see, any reservation of any sort at all).

Project Kalima is exactly that. A project to translate major works of literature, science, philosophy into Arabic. Kalima is the Arabic for 'word'. The problem being addressed is that very little has been translated into Arabic since the middle ages, so that Arabic-only speakers simply have no intellectual access to the non-Arabic world. And it's planned to be a two-way street; literature has not been much translated out of Arabic for a very long time, either; particularly not into English, apparently: Project Kalima will address that, too.

Having said which, the problem itself is scary: it seems that more works are translated into, say, Spanish in a year (about 10 000 books) than have been translated into Arabic in a thousand years.

What happened to the High Islamic culture that saved Europe from barbarism and started our renaissance?


Immigration and The Bishop Of Rochester.

08 January 2008 .

A couple of days ago I tried exploring my attitude to the question of immigration; I thought I'd be writing something fairly short but, watching it get longer and longer, I took a break. Before I returned to it the next day, I'd heard about Rochester's article. I think that he's going to create quite a stir; so, rather than continuing my article, I'll leave it for a while and come back to comment if and when.

Added 17 Jan: A hornets' nest in the rags for a couple of days... then nowt. I'm waiting on the weeklies.


Police Protection...

02 February 2008 .

... for Dr. Nazir Ali, Bishop of Rochester, against death threats by those who claim (without discernable evidence) that he's disrespected Islam. (In today's news.)

But all the mega-discussion I had half expected... hasn't happened.


Sharia On Television.

03 February 2008 .

There were a couple of series of late-night audience discussion programmes on TV a year or two ago about Sharia laws and living. (I think they may have been called simply 'The Sharia Programme'.) I caught the first one by chance, and got quite hooked. There have been more programmes on Sharia, and tonight I watched 'Divorce Sharia Style'.

Unfortunately, while I find these programmes interesting - and sometimes even unexpectedly enjoyable - I'm not sure that they're contributing to my sympathy with Islam.

Today's effort was a case in point. What ran through it quite relentlessly was the completely different ways in which men and women are regarded by the imams and sheiks. Much of the programme centred around a spoilt young man, born in England, who should have been ashamed of ever letting his tale be published: having gone to Pakistan to find a bride, he brought his wife by this arranged marriage to England, gave her three children and clearly treated her horribly. After all this, he went off back to Pakistan and married a second wife, at which the first - rather understandably - objected. So he divorced her, verbally (as men but not women can do under Sharia law). In her place, I'd just be glad to be shot of him, but of course that's easy for me to say. Later, because of pressure by his family, he obtained a fatwa to get her back (all the while saying he'd never wanted to marry her in the first place). It was obvious that she was desperately unhappy, but the pressures on her must have been enormous; at first she said she wouldn't even talk to him unless he agreed to divorce his second wife (two families buggered up...) but she ended up back with him, with His Manship still married (bigamously) to the other woman. Then he left her in England and went off back to Pakistan for seven months to be with the second wife. The sheik who issued the fatwa had gone to a great deal of effort to get the man back with his first wife... but once he'd succeeded, he was totally unbothered by what going to be done about the second wife, or about the first wife's misery. The whole weight of the law seemed to be dedicated to allowing a cruel and bigamous creature to behave like a caveman. When women want a divorce, predictably, the story is quite different: three sheiks have to agree (and in one very obvious case, where the first sheik said there should be an instant divorce, the two others wouldn't agree, so she was stuffed.

Then we were treated to this sheik saying how happy Britain would be if our government accepted the wishes of Allah and adopted Sharia law. He pointed out that a few amputated hands would soon empty our prisons, and that a woman or two condignly stoned to death would put an end to adultery.

Conciliation between Islam and the West is a matter of urgency (if not survival) - and of humanity - as is, thereafter, peaceful co-existence and, preferably, close community. But some of the sheik's beliefs and ideas are utterly, and irreversibly, repugnant to me. And, I imagine, to much of Britain (secular or religious). (Just as, clearly, some of our customs are intolerable to him.) So what do we do? Because one thing I've learned from these programmes is that I'd take to the hills with the partisans before I'd submit to Sharia.

I don't want to feel enmity to any person's beliefs, but it is getting harder to stay conciliatory. And I'm quite fed up of being told (to my face, sometimes) that the indigenous culture and religion of my country are the work of the devil. (And that goes for fundamentalist Christians saying the same things to me, just as much as Muslims.)

What is it about all three Abrahamic religions, that lets their fundamentalists have such contempt for women? (And that screws our societies up so much about sex? And that takes such a delight in mutilating people - generally, tellingly, about the genitals)?)

Interesting question by the sheik: Britain endorsed Sharia law for Muslims during the Raj, in India, so why aren't we willing to adopt it here?


Accommodating Sharia within the British legal system.

08 February 2008 .

The Archbishop of Canterbury really has put the cat amongst the pigeons. And he seemed such a saintly old chap.

Many of the Anglicans feel that he has betrayed the Church of England. Many of the secularists believe that we're in some sense seeing a new aspect of the old and still simmering conflict between church and state. There is some justice, I think, in the fear that Canterbury is challenging - threatening to reverse - the historical evolution of state law away from the influence of religion.

I've recently expressed my increasing suspicion of Sharia. (Actually, I expressed what I felt at that moment - which may have been more disdainful than my average opinion...) But I'm not sure that Canterbury, both as the incumbent of the post and as the person he is, had any choice but to express the opinions he did, or something very like them.

[I see too many practical difficulties in operating two legal systems side by side (What if two parties in a dispute can't agree which system to accept? Should a person preferring Sharia be forced to abandon it because the other party claims prior right to the state system?); but I don't for a moment think that that's what Canterbury meant. (I do worry that he seems to be suggesting almost a mutation so that the legal system actually becomes, in part, Sharia.)]

There's so much discussion, and no doubt will be, that I doubt whether I can add much that's useful: so these comments instead:

1. Canterbury's had a lot of stick; I'm convinced that this has been and is both unfair and wrong. Islam is a part of British society now, we ought to be having precisely these discussions, and it may be that the head of the English church is the right person to get them started. But...

2. What a pity that there was, instantly, so much gas and fury. Some of the folk I've heard arguing on radio and TV (on both sides of the argument) are straight out of the middle ages in their vehemence. As for the newspapers... not impressive, on the whole. More to do with selling than conciliating, I think.

3. What if Dr. Nazir Ali, presently Bishop of Rochester but who's been tipped, I believe, for Canterbury, had actually been in Canterbury over the past few years? With an experience of Islam very different from Dr. Williams's, would his position have been rather different? Would he have been more protective of our religion and culture - the threats to which he may feel he understands better than Dr. Williams?

I'll be interested to hear his response to what's been said.

Added later: Dr Azzim Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought said, 'It's a workable idea and I salute the Archbishop, he has utter wisdom'. He went to talk, in similar vein to Dr. Williams, about matters which might be of concern within the Muslim community which could be considered - such as marriage, inheritance and divorce, '...part and parcel of their religion that should be their prerogative.' And we come to the problem. I can only speak for myself; I may be pretty dubious about some Muslim marriage arrangements, but when it comes to the rules of divorce, I have been given no reason to regard them as anything but anathema and I would think that they are so contrary to European sensitivities that to give them the full force of law would be intolerable here.

Well, all for discussion, one might agree... except that Dr. T. then went on: 'Why should Christians and Jews impose something else on the Muslims? Western countries, this one in particular, need to learn a lot from Muslim countries.'

Where on earth have the Jews appeared from, all of a sudden, in this? If this isn't classic racism I really do not know what is. Never mind his outrageous comments about this country learning from Muslim ones (which ones, pray?) or the extraordinary intolerance with which the ethnic homelands of many of our Muslim immigrants treat Jews and Christians (and often fellow Muslims) - with the overt support of many of those same immigrants here - there is a point that really needs to be brought out:

Muslims are complaining that Jewish courts in this country have some sort of special privileges; they don't - so far as I know, they operate on exactly the same basis as the Sharia courts in this country: the legal system here permits them both (you could set up an Odinist Hall of Justice, if you wished, with much the same authority over those who chose to go along with it, with exactly the same legal status with regard to, say, contracts), but gives neither of them any supralegal powers.

If the Muslims want their courts to have the same authority as the Jewish courts, they already have it; end of story. What they're looking for - and what Dr. Williams seems to want them to be offered - is something more than that. The comments of Dr. Tamimi, now-demonstrable racist, and others like him, will certainly make this reader less willing to listen.

Talking of Muslim marriage; the British state is now paying (tiny!) benefits to lawful (in Pakistan, inter alia) polygamous wives; this is an idea that doesn't unduly bother me, except that I wonder why this is the case for Muslims whereas when (I think it was) Jerry Lee Lewis landed in England with his equally lawful (in the US) but underaged (in the UK) 14-year-old wife he was promptly arrested. While JLL was some time ago, I do think that perhaps we ought to have a declaration on the matter by HMG (if only to embarrass them).

And as for the Muslims themselves; I have a suspicion that in fact many of them have come to this country to escape the baleful grip of Sharia - and some of them probably to escape from the likes of Dr. Tamimi and their obnoxious opinions.


Multiculturalism Under Attack.

10 February 2008 .

The concept of multiculturalism is under a more comprehensive attack than it has ever been in my lifetime; it's hard to tell yet what impact this is going to have on the 'great experiment', the nurturing of multiculturalism in our society.

I am, and I always have been, a believer. In the simplest terms, I like the idea that I live my life as I choose, within my own cultural framework if I wish, while my neighbours live theirs as they wish, within the conscience, confession or culture that they are born to - or choose; and that, because we are neighbours, we become friends, share our lives and experiences, and are all enriched. Multiculturalism seems to me a noble offshoot of Western Enlightenment respect for liberty and the individual and, whether in the end the experiment succeeds or fails, I believe that it was always that - honourable. I do regret, I admit, that it ever had to be an 'experiment' at all: how much better if the instinct came to us naturally.

I believe that the 'melting pot' is the future, whether or not multiculturalism is the route to it, and a new world will come out of that - not necessarily altogether better or worse than ours, just different, with its own dreams and problems but perhaps without some of the conflicts; the alternative, if it is to be that we all continue to stare at each other from behind walls of ignorance, suspicion or fear, is just too depressing to contemplate.

When I was a child, I lived in Earl's Court and spent a deal of time in North London. I sometimes heard, of course, about problems like the Notting Hill riots; but, to me in those days, other cultures meant cheerful, outgoing and (most importantly to me at the time) kind-to-children West Indians. When I started teaching in a culturally mixed school, the party line in London was that we should be 'colour-blind'. Personally, I could live with that then, because I thought that it allowed cultures to flourish; but, since then, we've chosen as a society to go down the more positive (even pro-active) road of multiculturalism. [Colour-blindness would have seemed perfectly workable to me as a child, if I'd thought about it, and still would if it weren't for the resilient instinct to xenophobia. I'm not so keen now, because I think it could be the cover for a new and more crushing conformity: as a first example, I think of a child in a school, whose culture does not match the majority - whose culture will be ignored in the name of colour-blindness; it was sometimes the experience of black pupils in largely white schools. (In passing, I believe the same can result from 'class-blindness'.)]

However... Multiculturalism has come up against that bugbear of dreams and political ideas and systems, human nature.

We have, inter alia:

• worried and defensive British indigenous cultures going through a crisis of self-confidence;
• a large number of often tight-knit incoming cultures, many of them bringing problems and even criminal traits with them to an extent that the receiving society feels overwhelmed - and ill served by an overworked, politicised police force combined with a conflicted and rather detached judiciary;
• one group of incomers in particular, Muslims, of whom a large section seems strident, unduly demanding, utterly disrespectful either of British society or its multiculturalism, and adamant in its refusal to compromise...
• ...while at the same time exercising traditions (particularly with regard to the status of women) with which the majority community (regarding those traditions as barbaric) cannot compromise; and, in connection with that:
• a perception that there is a religious drive, and possibly large-scale funding by one foreign state (Saudi-Arabia), which sees the indigenous culture as weak and ripe for... a conquest of ideas?

and these are the cause of fault lines which our society doesn't seem to handling too well right now.

The problem with multiculturalism as it now 'established' is that there has to be a commitment to it, together with a generous willingness to compromise, by the influential majority of every group within society. At the moment that just isn't the case; consequently, human nature - including xenophobia and a thousand private agendas - is pulling the dream apart. [It's been said that any political or social system would work if it weren't for human nature. I'm a democrat insofar as I believe that democracy has come closest to mitigating the more baleful effects of human nature (and I'm a blogger because I believe that we have to watch our democracy very closely to see it stays democratic). We haven't yet found how to give our multiculturalism the resilience we hope democracy has.]

Thinking of Canterbury's recent speech... I think it's right and actively good that all these conversations are taking place about the ways the different groups in our society are coming together (or are failing to come together, or should be coming together).

It's possible that we are seeing a critical moment in the development of our society. I hope we're up to it; but, whatever comes of it in the end, it's going to be lively.


The Most Shameful Posting I've Ever Made. But I'm Tired Of Being Censored.

10 February 2008 .

Whether or not multiculturalism will, or can, work in this country, I've said on this website that I'm a believer and shall always regard the experiment as having been a noble one.

However, there are some things which need saying.

As a teacher, supporting the idea of multiculturalism, I watched others (who did not have my certainty, or who had different ideas) being silenced under the threat of being branded racist or losing their jobs; and it happened all the time.

(Please See 1984 - Post-Modernism and Surrealism - 23 November 2007. I'm sorry that so far I can only take you to the top of the page).

I swear, here, that I tried not to be part of this moral Taliban. What I didn't realise was how intimidated I was becoming.
(Please also take a look at The Spider's Web - Control - 10 February 2008).

I want to say

1) that in my lifetime I have seen my culture change so greatly that I now feel more at home in some cities in Europe and the US than I do a few hundred yards from where I was born;

2) that, nevertheless, all my adult life I have been willing to compromise with different communities, and sometimes I've accepted almost intolerably patronising guidance - 'courses' - into order to try to do so more effectively;

3) that I have been told, time after time after time, that, because I'm white and male I am by definition racist (and sexist and God knows what); and I'm tired of it, and I'm tired of the unco' PC trying to intimidate me;

4) that I would have put up with all of that... but now I've got Dr. Tamimi telling me that I must learn from best practice - from countries stuck in the seventeenth century, with practices which my ancestors found repellent even then... and the head of the English Church is telling me that it is inevitable that Sharia Law (which is not some lovely New Age 'peace on everybody' and 'all people are equal' bit of benevolent guidance, whatever anyone says) will be incorporated into the English system... and clerics are telling the faithful that Jews are the spawn of the devil and that they, the faithful, will get lots of sex if they kill me.

I want to say that it is not my job to keep re-examining Sharia until I can add 2+2 and make 5: Sharia in its mutilating mode is all too plain (the punishments are put on the net, as a warning, for Heaven's sake) and even in this country, given plenty of media space, Sharia has shown this interested explorer that a great deal of it is repellent. I don't believe that Mohammed was the last prophet - I'm not a Muslim - and I'm not even likely to be convinced that he was a particularly good man, if I am to judge by too many of his followers. So if Sharia wants my vote, it needs to stop bullying and taking advantage of my (Enlightenment and Christian) society; it needs to pull its finger out and start realising that it has to find another route.

I need, too, to be given some evidence of what I'm told all the time, that the vicious fundamentalism of the Wahhabis, or the Deobandis, or whoever they are, as it keeps popping up in mosques within yards of where I live*, really is the extremism of a fraction of 1% of the Muslim world; because, believe me, I have worked harder than some in this country to learn about and understand Islam, and I haven't seen that evidence.

*I've been told I shouldn't believe everything I read... I don't have to; I had to pass Hamzah preaching his toxic message on the way to my local underground station.

In passing: we had large numbers of Muslim boys at the school where I was teaching 20 or 30 years ago; from a range of countries, primarily Turkey, Pakistan, Bagla Desh and parts of North Africa, so mainly but not exclusively Sunni. At about 14, they 'came of age'. It wasn't universal, but it was widespread (possibly by a majority), that at this age they would start being anything from disrespectful to outright offensive to women teachers. Again and again I came across young men who would do what I (as a man) asked, without a question, but who flatly stated that no woman could have authority over them. At home these same young men had a quite extraordinary authority not only over their sisters, but over their mothers. It was not spoken about too loudly, and caused the political left a deal of difficulty. It wasn't extremism in the sense that we talk about today, but looking back I realise that neither was it simply some charming 'other'. To my regret, I tried to 'accept' it as part of their culture; I now believe that was a mistake, though it's hard to know what if anything I should or would have been allowed to do. (Added 11 Feb.)

There is discussion in many of the rags at the moment about the dangers of people giving too much personal information on social network sites. Well, I've really gone overboard here. Am I going to regret it? If any Muslims identify who I am, are they going to give me another chance and talk to me? Or is there going to be a fatwa and, one day, a bomb? Or am I simply going to dismissed as another mad racist.

I would, without a doubt, have been fired from my most recent job for writing all this. Well, that won't happen, at least.

I am ashamed, however, that some of my friends are going to read this. Because the pity of it all is I am quite happy to coexist with Muslims just as I am with Christians, Atheists or anyone else who will respect me and mine in return; notwithstanding anything I've said here, I still think Canterbury was right to open up the discussion as he has. I'm just fed up with being told what to think, with being threatened, with being insulted, with being patronised, etc. etc. etc.

Added later: One thing I think I may have exorcised from myself this evening is the shadow of the Mind Police: if you don't think there's any such thing, try being a teacher in parts of North London.

A lot of our troubles aren't down to Muslims at all, but to an imperialist urge that just won't leave the Middle East alone on the one hand, and (often left or quondam-left) social agendas that feed on intimidation and mind-control on the other.

Do you think there aren't any mind games? Do you think there isn't a part of our political world which, not necessarily giving tuppence for Muslims, is nonetheless happy to use aspects of Islam - and of Islamic extremism - for its own purposes? It may be that you're right but, if so, I have to tell you that I'm far from the only person who has become slightly paranoid.


Multiculturalism could have been Enlightenment manifest.

11 February 2008 .

Johann Hari today (Indy): 'Rowan Williams has shown us one thing - why multiculturalism must be abandoned.'

'There is a better way for the state to understand and regulate human differences, beyond the old oppositions of multiculturalism and Tebbittry (...if people are going to live together, they need to look and feel similar, and have a tightly prescribed shared identity). It is called liberalism... Where a multiculturalist prizes the rights of religious groups, a liberal favours the rights of the individual.' Hari has, I admit, put his finger on an itch which has bothered me for a long time; but, even so, I think he's wrong - there doesn't, ideally, have to be a contradiction between the two. Sadly, very few things work out ideally when put into practice... He's also missing a point, I think; the reason why there was a need for a policy - which manifested as multiculturalism - was that people on the whole are not very liberal by nature. Individuals are often racists.

Elsewhere he makes the point which I almost suspect Dr. Williams, by his references to Sharia in the UK, might have been complete unaware of; that is, in respect of the 'voluntary' nature of Sharia courts - namely that women, particularly, often 'consent' to the authority of such courts because they don't know that legally they don't have to, or because of the threat of intimidation (or violence, or death) or of eviction from the only social group they know.

I wish I'd noted the account I read the other day of a young (North African?) man in a state of terror over his appearance in a Sharia court - not knowing that he was entitled to recourse to English courts.

Quote by Hari from Muslim feminist Irshad Manji: "When it comes to contemporary Sharia, choice is theory, intimidation is reality."

-/-

Since I'm with the Indy... I am tempted to reproduce Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's appalled response to Dr. Williams from yesterday ('What he wishes on us is an abomination') in full. Read it if you have the chance; I'll settle for this:

'He lectures the nation on the benefits of Sharia law - made by bearded men, for men - and wants the alternative legal system to be accommodated within our democracy in the spirit of inclusion and cohesion.
'Pray tell me sir, how do separate and impenetrable courts and schools and extreme female segregation promote commonalities and deep bonds between citizens of these small isles.'


Canterbury And The Hand Of Peace.

17 February 2008 .

We would like to believe that the professed men of God are men of goodwill: on the whole, they probably are. Yet... the common ground of the three Abrahamic religions enjoys at best an uneasy peace, Christians are given to imperial adventures in Muslim lands and within my lifetime prayed in Rome for the conversion of the 'perfidious Jew', and many Muslims believe they'll get paradise and lots of sex if they kill Christians, while regarding Jews as spawn of the Devil. Even within Islam, Shia and Sunni hate and kill each other, both despising Sufism - which just about puts Islam on a par with the Christianity of not so long ago. And here in the UK, Imams, spitting with hatred, are leading British citizens to kill other British citizens (and themselves in the process). Seen from the point of view of this member of the race of demented baboons we call humanity, it's a far from godly picture.

From among the worldly princes in purple of the church in Rome, and the flinty-eyed imams and mullahs, and the fundamentalist American preacher-men, and so many other 'godly' men of no god I recognise, Canterbury stood up with message of reconciliation and coexistence.

And has been well and truly stomped on for it.

We probably get the "religion" we deserve.

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I'll bet that Chaucer has been quoted like crazy since the ABC's little talk; I'd even bet that the selfsame lines have been used. But how could I resist them?

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