Monthly Archives: April 2015

Criminal Phobia

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Ed Miliband, UK opposition leader and head honcho of the British Labour Party, stated in an interview with a muslim news service that he would outlaw Islamophobia.

We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime

This is a really bad idea.

The reasons for this are manyfold, and while I suspect that Miliband’s heart is in the right place for suggesting this, it’s disquietingly obvious that his brain isn’t:

First, a phobia is an irrational fear, i.e. a fear that has no base. For example, agoraphobia is a fear of open places. Most importantly, though, a phobia is a medical condition.

There are doubtless people who have an irrational fear of Islam, and by extension fear those who adhere to Islam: Muslims. These people are a tiny minority. They are not the people Miliband wants apprehended, because they have a true case of Islamophobia – a real phobia. They suffer from a medical condition. You can’t, or shouldn’t, really, make that a crime. If you did, you would make falling ill a crime. Imagine if the government outlawed having a cold. They could throw you in prison for sneezing.

Yeah, it’s that preposterous.

There are, on the other hand, many people who criticize many aspects of the Ideology called Islam. There are quite rational reasons to fear Islam’s Ideology – about as many rational reasons as there are to fear Christianity, Judaism or any other religion.

Some people are not only rationally afraid of what damage such an ideology could inflict on society, they experience disquiet – even apprehension – in the presence of devout practitioners of religion: muslim fundamentalists, for example. Their unease isn’t entirely baseless: criticizing Islam in the presence of islamist fundamentals can be dangerous, even lethal. The shocking images of the Charlie Hebdo massacre are still too fresh to ignore. So these aren’t the people Miliband is after either.

I submit that what labour actually wants to outlaw isn’t really Islamophobia. They want to outlaw hate-mongers who seek to make political hay or gain personal status from inciting hate. These people aren’t Islamophobes. They are the exact opposite – they love Islam, for they can only thrive in its presence.

But the problem lies much deeper: Islamophobia is an ill-defined term that entered the English language in 1997; today it is a term devoid of true meaning yet has become rife with accusation. It was coined to call out (perceived) prejudice against Muslims. As such, the term is strongly misleading: it conflates an Ideology (Islam) with people (Muslims). This has lead to serious misunderstandings, a fact that is constantly being maliciously exploited.

For example, a few months ago, on Bill Maher’s Real Time, Actor Ben Affleck verbally attacked Philosopher Sam Harris for his critique that Islam is the Mother Lode of bad ideas. Affleck interpreted the criticism as a slur on Muslims: Muslims are idiots.

This is the kind of misunderstanding that results from conflating things that must be kept separate. It has also resulted in a strange imbalance: If someone openly said The Torah is the Mother Lode of bad ideas, nobody would think them to be an anti-semitic, merely overly critical of some scripture. Do the same with the Quran, and many people label you an Islamophobe.

Because of this, the term Islamophobia is now actively, and intentionally, used to stifle criticism of Islam. Such criticism is interpreted as an attack on muslims. It’s as if a doctor who said “sugar is bad for your health” was understood as saying “people who eat sugar are bad”.

Making Islamophobia a hate crime in this context would be like making Blasphemy a criminal offense: say God Damned and get thrown into jail for committing a hate crime.

So the issue runs deeper than mere semantics. What we must do is disentangle ideology from believers, concepts from people. It’s not Islamophobia that should be labelled a hate crime. Discriminating against Muslims should be. And the word for that is anti-muslimism, the muslim pendant to anti-semitism. Both should be a criminal offense.

How do we determine anti-muslimism? If your actions are directed exclusively against Muslims (people) simply because they are Muslims, you are guilty of anti-muslimism. If you are critical of Islam (ideology), you are not – even if people don’t like, or feel offended by, your opinion. Ridiculing an ideology is not an attack on its adherents, no matter how offended they may feel.

The problem with this approach: too many people have problem grasping that last part. See Ben Affleck.

Satanic Viagra

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Reports on religion become stranger by the day. A recent report in the Telegraph made me question if editors had given up on journalists altogether. How else would the following subhead have slipped into publication:
 

‘Pope Francis’ effect credited with rising demand for exorcisms around the world.

Excuse me? Credited? That’s like saying Jihadists are to be credited for 9/11! The whole article reads like an episode from The Twilight Zone:

States Father Cesare Truqui, chief Exorcist in Chur, Switzerland:

“Pope Francis talks about the Devil all the time and has certainly raised awareness about exorcism. But all Latin Americans have this sensibility – for them, the existence of the Devil is part of their faith.”

Truqui uses a rather broad brush here, as I’m sure that not all Latin Americans are as batshit crazy as this idiot. But he does point to a real problem: in order to shore up their dwindling numbers, the catholic church is ratcheting up a fictitious threat to scare people into staying. They obviously don’t give a damn that full-on bronze-age superstition will scare borderline psychopaths into hurting or killing others – the end justifies the menace, so to speak. After all, it is quite damning (ha, ha) evidence that satanic possession is a phenomenon that only afflicts Christians.

But what bewilders me most is how priests can state the most outrageous stupidities without reporters calling them on it. In the interview, Chief Exorcist Truqui states that

I once treated […] a man who was obsessed with masturbating – he did it every day, many times

Seriously? So when you are able to jerk off multiple times a day you are now possessed by the Devil? Hey, I wish I could do that. Exorcise your libido? Did someone perhaps confuse that word with exercise and called the wrong professional? Only the uptight, sexually dysfunctional church could find something wrong with that. Listen, you idiots, don’t you know that Pfizer has a major product line to give clients what you think is the Devil’s work? Are you really that retarded?  

It gets worse. Claiming he can discern the difference between medically ill people and those truly possessed by the Devil, exorcist Truqui enthuses

There are some classic signs – people who speak in ancient tongues, for instance. Other people have supernatural strength when they are in a state of possession[…]. In some cases, people are able to levitate.

Note that Truquil carefully avoids an outright lie here – he doesn’t say that he’s ever witnessed such an event, just what would be indicative of a possesion. No reliable evidence of levitation, spontaneous language abilities, or truly superhuman strength has ever been recoded, and Truquil knows that. He just spouts these idiocies for the simple minded believers to sell his snake oil.

It’s not as if he doesn’t know it:

“A considerable number of the cases referred to us are in fact psychiatric cases”

Another narrowly avoided lie: they all are.

Word!

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Deeply religious Christians claim that the Bible is the perfect, unerring and true word of their god. Devout Muslims state the same about their sacred texts. Their God, of course, is omnipotent, benevolent, and omniscient. However, said deeply religious people never see the contradiction of their assertions with reality that become glaringly obvious in discussions. When quoting their own holy text to such a believer, atheists often hear something like this:

  • “You took that quote out of context” (a Christian favorite, and corollary to “you need to read the whole bible to understand it”.)
  • “That [the quote] only makes sense in its original language” (a Muslim favorite)

What they seemingly don’t understand is that you should never use these arguments if you think that your sacred texts are the true word of god because of a simple fact:

An omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being’s true, perfect and unerring word would be impossible to misunderstand.

Also, such a word would not, at least in theory, require any means of interpretation – everyone would instantly recognize and understand its message. The direct, true word of a supreme being transcends traditional communication and coalesces in our thoughts with its full meaning perfectly intact, impossible to misunderstand or misrepresent. An omnipotent being would get its message across.

Now, since not everyone agrees on the same interpretation, let alone same sacred text, something must be wrong. A truly sacred text would not allow a belief to fracture into denominations, nor would it allow factions to go to war over the correct interpretation (orthodox vs protestant vs catholic Christians or Sunni vs Shia Muslims): there would only be one interpretation. Such a text would unite and convince instantly. It would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind.

Supposing, of course, that this god is truly benevolent. It’s entirely possible that a malevolent God seeds many convincing yet contradictory, deliberately imperfect holy texts throughout the world to spread the mayhem, distraught and death we see today.

But if we assume that god is benevolent, and not a prankster, any true word of his or her would pass a very simple litmus test – it must be universally understood.

So here’s an easy test that you can apply to something allegedly holy: if that text required any kind of translation, it’s not His true word.

Pagan vs. Heathen

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A few weeks ago, in an aside, I used both terms pagan and heathen in the same sentence, prompting my father to ask me what the difference is. Truth be told, when I was writing, I simply used both words because I liked the rhythm, while being dimly aware that I was probably using two terms that essentially were synonyms.

So what is the difference between a pagan and a heathen? It turns out that the answer is not simple at all.

Historically, both terms were used by people who believed in the Bible God to describe people who didn’t subscribe to the Judeo-Christian belief – but with subtle differences. Both were derogatory terms. Pagan was used to identify an idol worshipper of Hellenistic origin (Zeus, Jupiter, Athene, etc.). The term Heathen, on the other hand, referred to the untamed wild northern people – living on the Heath – who worshipped Asgardian gods (Odin, Thor, etc.).

Later (around 1000 AD, after Christianity had become more entrenched in Europe and belief in Hellenistic and Asgardian gods became rare), these terms became less distinct. From inside Christianity, everyone who wasn’t a Christian was referred to as a heathen, including Muslims (who are a subset of the Abrahamic faith), and Atheists (rare as they were), but excluding Jews. So after the crusades, the words heathen and pagan became true synonyms.

Of course, it is important to note that both terms require a frame of reference: the word heathen or pagan loses meaning outside the Christian sphere. Islam, for example, does not make the distinction: for both words, the Arabic translation is الوثني, i.e. a primitive unbeliever (yet Islam itself makes the distinction between Unbelievers and People of the Book (أهل الكتاب): Jews, Sabians and Christians).

Today, of course, it’s even more complex. New Age Bimbos have rediscovered belief in supernatural BS, and have honestly started to refer to themselves as Pagan or Heathen. The fact that they refer to themselves as a non-christian rather than what they actually believe in tells us everything we need to know about the level of intelligence involved in these believers.

And then of course there is my favorite meaning: nowadays, when someone jokingly refers to herself as a heathen or pagan, she usually means to say that she has some residual belief, but not as much as her family would like her to have. This believer usually sees the inside of a church either as a tourist attraction, or on Christmas and Easter.

Which reminds me: Happy Easter, to all you heathens and idol worshipers! And to all the Christians who went on a hunt for quintessential pagan idol: the Easter Egg.