Seumas Milne’s readiness to abandon facts and rhetorically fellate theocratic thugs has been noted many times, along with his fondness for Stalinism and nostalgic Communists. At the Guardian, under Milne’s editorial wing, Milosevic groupies and other assorted rogues have been favoured with a platform from which to misinform readers. In today’s Guardian, the former comment editor and current associate editor accelerates his descent into cartoonish absurdity and attempts to paint religion as an ally in some radical crusade against the evil capitalist system. A system of which Seumas, son of Sir Alasdair Milne, is a notable beneficiary.

Milne sees the scope for

Stronger alliances between the secular left and religious progressives against poverty, capitalism and war… Religion can play a reactionary or a progressive role, and the struggle is now within it, not against it. For the future, it can be an ally of radical change.

Well, perhaps. But given Milne’s extensive history of regarding religious fantasists and bigots as “progressives” and worthy of propaganda space in a “progressive” newspaper, some doubts may spring to mind. This, after all, is a man who gave space to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir and apologists for ritual murder, and who describes Tariq Ramadan, who dreams of an Islamised Europe, as “progressive” and a “liberal academic.” Even less convincing is Milne’s depiction of those who take a different view – say, by criticising aspects of Islam or insisting on the separation of church and state – as

Secular absolutists whose attitudes uncannily mirror those of religious literalists.

Thus, an advocacy of critical thought and self-determination is deemed to “mirror” an urge to impose on others the purported will of hypothetical deities. The arguments of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are, it seems, in no way distinguishable from those of people who do this. Or this. Or this. Perhaps Seumas has started channelling the wisdom of his colleague, Madeleine Bunting, whose search for “authenticity” and disdain for Enlightenment values – of which she, a female journalist, is another beneficiary – are aired at regular intervals. Certainly, a sense of déjà vu is hard to miss, not least when those who criticise religion, and one in particular, often for very good reasons, are denounced by Milne as

Apologists for western supremacism and violence.

As Alan Johnson pointed out, and as was subsequently confirmed, it’s a signature of Milne’s commentary that practically no-one may disagree or refute his claims, even on matters of basic fact, without immediately being labelled a “NeoCon”, “Islamophobe” or “warmonger”. Words which, among some, are immensely effective in shutting down rational thought. One particular passage stands out to illustrate Johnson’s point and highlight Milne’s contortions:

Panicked by the rise of radical Islamism and the newly assertive religious identity of migrant communities in a secular Europe, the anti-religious evangelists are increasingly using atheism as a banner for the defence of the global liberal capitalist order and the wars fought since 2001 to assert its dominance. At the same time, they are unable to recognise the ethnic dimension of their Islamophobia, let alone the deeper reasons why people continue to search for spiritual meaning in a grossly destructive economic environment where social alternatives have been pronounced dead and narcissistic consumption is king.

One might wonder if the above also illustrates how the mind of a true believer, in this case Mr Milne’s, can so easily come undone.

On Radio 4 this morning, Quentin Letts asked, not unreasonably, What’s the Point of the Arts Council?

The reason Arts Council officials demand “challenging and contemporary” work is not that the new is necessarily better; it’s because the new gives them an edge. They can be its arbiters and make sure it follows approved creeds.

To hear a glittering cast opine, along with the notion of subsidised beer and what may be the first broadcast use of the term “tickboxery”, click here.

The readiness of many Guardian commentators to assume that the views of their own modest readership reflect those of the country as a whole, and perhaps all enlightened beings, has previously been noted. Some project their personal dramas onto crushing social forces like Heat magazine, and Madeleine Bunting rarely misses an opportunity to tell us how we feel about things she doesn’t like. Yesterday’s Guardian leader, titled Fear and Flying, provides another example of this phenomenon while denouncing the use of aircraft as a means of covering large distances. Flying is, apparently, an “addiction” – one which must be curbed for the sake of Mother Earth. The piece states, a tad presumptuously, 

It is easy to preach about the need to restrict air travel…

Actually, I find it quite difficult to preach about the need to restrict air travel, but clearly that’s a sign of my moral inadequacy. More upstanding, and less inhibited, Guardian readers voiced their own ecstasy of indignation:

Air travel is disgusting both in the air and on the ground.

NOBODY who flies casually can call themselves ethical. 

Of note, however, is the article’s opening claim that,

Flying has become a modern middle-class hypocrisy, a source of guilt and pleasure all at the same time.

This belief that the rest of us must, simply must, share in some kind of titillating remorse caught the eye of Mr Euginedes: 

Now, I’m willing to accept that I may not have a finger on the pulse of the nation, but are people really “guilty” about flying? Are there actually people outside the Guardian / Independent Axis of Hand-Wringing who hesitate at the “checkout” screen at Expedia, their pointers hovering, shaky with guilt, over the “Buy” icon, before going back and booking trains to Cornwall instead? And if so, who are they?

It would, I feel, be of tremendous public benefit to repeat the phrase “Axis of Hand-Wringing” at regular intervals in the hope that it will be imprinted on the popular consciousness. Then, given time and sufficient repetition, everyone will come to feel exactly as I do.

Update:

Visitors via Tim Blair may also be interested in a condition that afflicts quite a few Guardian regulars, Phantom Guilt Syndrome.

In light of recent rumblings on bias in academia, Fabian Tassano has some not unrelated thoughts.

Imagine the following scenario. A bunch of intelligent people get together and create — using funding that is more or less unconditional — a system for generating intellectual output. However, this output does not have to pass any particular test except whether a majority of system insiders agree it is worthy. So the members of the system are entirely insulated from assessment other than their own. Like any social group, they create a hierarchy of rank, in which some are allowed to progress to the top of the ladder depending on criteria which the group as a whole decides on. What is the likely outcome? And what happens if there also starts to be an ideology which places pressure on them to produce results which fit with, rather than go against, that ideology?

What’s the term I’m looking for? Vanity? Hubris? Ah, yes. Pathological denial. 

Concerned about what they see as a rise in the defamation of Islam, leaders of the world’s Muslim nations are considering taking legal action against those that slight their religion or its sacred symbols. It was a key issue during a two-day summit that ended Friday in this western Africa capital. The Muslim leaders are attempting to demand redress from nations like Denmark, which allowed the publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and again last month, to the fury of the Muslim world.

Though the legal measures being considered have not been spelled out, the idea pits many Muslims against principles of freedom of speech enshrined in the constitutions of numerous Western governments. “I don’t think freedom of expression should mean freedom from blasphemy,” said Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, the chairman of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. “There can be no freedom without limits.”

The report urges the creation of a “legal instrument” to crack down on defamation of Islam… “In our relation with the western world, we are going through a difficult time,” [OIC secretary general, Ekmeleddin] Ihsanoglu told the summit’s general assembly. “Islamophobia cannot be dealt with only through cultural activities but (through) a robust political engagement.”…A new charter drafted by the OIC commits the Muslim body “to protect and defend the true image of Islam” and “to combat the defamation of Islam.”

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference seems to imagine that self-esteem is a default entitlement and that “defamation” should also extend to matters of inconvenient fact; and thus believers – or rather Muslims – have some fictional right not to be criticised or mocked for publicly airing absurd and objectionable beliefs:

The OIC – backed by allies in Africa and by Russia and Cuba – has been pushing for stronger resolutions on “defamation” since a global controversy arose two years ago over cartoons in a Danish newspaper which Muslims say insult their religion. The “defamation” issue has become especially sensitive this year as the U.N. prepares to celebrate in the autumn the 50th anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration, long seen as the bedrock of international human rights law and practice.

That would be the declaration originally intended to protect against the most appalling acts of discrimination – many of which are, of course, still affirmed and perpetuated by orthodox Islamic jurisprudence. But perhaps we should peel away the rhetoric of victimhood, used so indecently, and look at what’s actually being demanded here: A right not to hear that one is being irrational, dishonest or mortifyingly stupid, regardless of just how irrational, dishonest or mortifyingly stupid one actually is. That’s a license of no small magnitude, and one that a person of good faith would neither grant nor desire. It’s one thing for a Muslim to perform whatever mental contortions are required to add the honorific “peace be upon him” to the name of a vain and murderous Bedouin who claimed to talk with God while beheading hundreds of his victims; but to enshrine that pathological dishonesty in international law would be intellectual vandalism on a jaw-dropping scale. 

Speaking at the OIC, Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, mustered the chutzpah to announce, entirely without irony, that “Islam has unjustly been associated with violence.” But events in India, China, the Czech Republic, Afghanistan, Germany, Britain – and, of course, the president’s own country – tell a rather different story. And the supremacist imperatives within Islamic theology, to which jihadists worldwide appeal, are, for many, a matter of religious duty, not some invention of infidels. The association of Islam with intolerance, racism and violence is impressed on the public consciousness first and foremost by those Muslims who, on an all but daily basis, behave in monstrous ways and warp the minds of children in the name of their religion. If the OIC devoted similar indignation and resources to inhibiting the perpetrators of such acts and denouncing what they do, maybe Islam’s public image would be more flattering than it is.

Update:

As I hope the above makes clear, the perversity on display in Dakar is remarkable, if not surprising. Like so many Islamic organisations, the OIC expends much more effort denouncing those who criticise aspects of Islam than it does denouncing those who commit atrocities in Islam’s name. If Muslim groups wish to repair Islam’s public image, to whatever extent it can be repaired, their efforts should be directed at the root of the problem, not at those who dare to point out that a problem exists.

Of the many strange ideas aired at the OIC, one of the strangest is the claim that freedom of religion means the right to have one’s beliefs, and thus one’s vanity, flattered at every turn. This is a novel interpretation, to say the least, and just a tad self-serving. But freedom of religion necessarily entails freedom from religion and the freedom to change one’s mind. Islam is, of course, uniquely barbarous in this regard, and most forms of Sharia mandate punishment, and often death, for those who wish to upgrade to a better faith, or indeed to none at all. For any speaker at the OIC to grumble about how Islam is perceived without first addressing the issue of apostasy and its punishment, and the issue of jihad and the dhimma, and sacralised racism, and blasphemy and censorship, and about a dozen other issues, is inexcusable moral flatulence.

As I wrote in one of my first posts,

Religious freedom is presumed to entail sparing believers any hint that others do not share their beliefs, and indeed may find them ludicrous. There is, apparently, no corresponding obligation for believers to embrace ideas that are not clearly risible, monstrous or disgusting.

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