The latest issue of Democratiya includes Ophelia Benson’s review of Ibn Warraq’s Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out:

In his introductory chapter, Ibn Warraq reproduces a pronouncement on apostasy in Islam from the ultra-conservative Tehran daily Kayhan International in 1986. It includes this observation.

The anti-apostasy punishments of Islam are proper laws to rescue mankind from falling into the cesspool of treason, betrayal, and disloyalty and to remind the human being of his ideological commitments. A committed man should not violate his promise and vow, especially his promise to God. (p. 32.)

A more wrong-headed idea is difficult to imagine. To define changing one’s mind about any particular set of ideas and truth claims as treason, betrayal, and disloyalty is to forbid thinking itself. Making the human being’s ideological commitments a permanent, irrevocable matter of loyalty is to impose ossification, dogmatism, conformity, and plain mindless stubbornness on an entire society, or, worse, an entire global ‘community of believers’.

Indeed. The issue of Islamic apostasy and its punishment will, to sane people, most likely have an absurd, looking glass quality, and it may be difficult to grasp the seriousness, even excitement, with which mental freedom, and its punishment, is discussed. Here’s a clip from Kuwait’s Al-Risala TV, filmed November 5, 2007, in which Muslim scholars and audience members share their thoughts on piety and murder. One choice exchange hinges on the charming moral logic that a person is, of course, free to leave Islam – on the understanding that indignant believers are free to kill that person for doing so.

Audience member: Sir, if you become an apostate, your punishment is death. There is a great problem that most of us, 70% of us, are Muslims because they were born to Muslim fathers and mothers. Before a person converts to Islam, he has the liberty to choose, but remember that if you want to convert from Islam, you will be punished by death. So you have the liberty to choose, but on the condition…

Al-Sweidan: That’s not liberty.

Audience member: It has conditions…

Al-Sweidan: What you are saying is: You have the right to become an apostate, but I will kill you.

Audience member: That’s right. I won’t tell him not to.

Al-Sweidan: What can be worse than being killed?

Audience member: That’s why he will not become an apostate.

It may, again, be difficult to conceive of a belief system in which the individual is reduced so severely to a mere sub-unit of the collective and in which affiliation is, according to many, a decidedly one-way street. This belief in punishing doubt and intellectual freedom is an intimately vile contrivance and a profound corruption of moral autonomy. It’s also a tool for generating fear and a license for sadism disguised as piety. Insofar as such ideas are normative within Islamic theology and its institutions, widespread shame is warranted, along with disrepute, resistance and no small amount of disgust. For some strange reason, the term “Roach Motel” springs readily to mind.

Update: Meanwhile, closer to home…

Ibn Warraq can be heard debating with Tariq Ramadan and others here. Warraq’s latest book, Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, is reviewed here by Rebecca Bynum. My discussion with Ophelia Benson can be found here. 

Related. And. Also. Plus.

No matter how many times I’ve read variations of the same, there remains something jarring about these lines,

The protesters gathered in Martyrs Square, outside the presidential palace in the capital, many of them carrying knives and sticks. Marchers chanted ‘Shame, shame on the UK’, ‘No tolerance – execution’ and ‘Kill her, kill her by firing squad’.

being immediately preceded by this one.

The marchers took to the streets after Friday prayers.

Robert Spencer responds to Ed Husain’s Guardian article, in which he claims that Spencer, Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are playing into the hands of jihadists:

The contention is that because I – and Hirsi Ali, and Ibn Warraq, and others – point out that there is a broad and deeply rooted tradition of violence and supremacism within Islam, therefore we are marginalising other Islamic traditions and legitimising bin Laden. In saying this, Husain implies that jihadism is a clear Islamic heresy, and that there is a broad tradition within Islam that rejects violence against non-Muslims and Islamic supremacism – and that Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq and I are ignoring or downplaying it out of some base motives. Bin Laden or someone like him invented jihadism and grafted it onto a religion that has otherwise peaceful teachings.

In reality, however, while there are a few courageous reformers out there, all – not just one, or a few, but all – the orthodox sects and schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the Islamic community to wage war against unbelievers and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law (references can be found here). There is no sect or school recognised as orthodox that rejects this. It is not playing into bin Laden’s hands to point it out; in fact, it is playing into bin Laden’s hands to deny it and denigrate those who point out that it is so, for there can be no reform of what one will not admit needs reforming.

Indeed. What’s interesting to me is how Husain’s transformation from extremist to ‘moderate’ seems to involve a denial of jihad’s historical and theological lineage and ultimately hinges on a conception of Muhammad that is, to say the very least, open to question: 

For me, it is [Muhammad’s] guidance, compassion, humanity, warmth, love, kindness that rescued me, and others, from Islamist extremism… His was a smiling face. His tomb in Medina today radiates the peace and serenity to which he was called.

And herein lies a problem. Any remotely critical, contextualised reading of Muhammad’s life, rule and purported ‘revelations’ will call into question Husain’s rather sugary imaginings. Assertions of Muhammad’s “compassion” or “kindness” are easily contested, often abrogated, and do little to inhibit jihadists who know their theology and history quite well, perhaps better than Mr Husain. Those who use Muhammad’s own words and example as a mandate for violence, coercion and atrocity are unlikely to be convinced by talk of “smiling faces” and radiant tombs. And the phenomenon of global jihad, arguably the issue of the age, will not be made to go away by ignoring its deep and problematic roots.

There are, of course, countless degrees of religious affiliation and many believers will be remarkably ignorant of their supposed prophet’s life and less edifying deeds. Many will know only the sketchiest and most sanitised accounts of who and what Muhammad was. More to the point, there will among many be a strong emotional disinclination to look critically at the founder of their religion – and at what that might imply about their own credulity. The potential for dissonance and resentment – to say nothing of embarrassment – is pretty obvious.

Judging by his Guardian article, Ed Husain seems to have lurched from Islamist to ingénue without pausing to reflect on the question of whether his belief in Muhammad as a numinous figure is fundamentally misplaced. Perhaps this isn’t too surprising. If a believer were to look critically at the most reliable accounts of Muhammad’s life, it would, I think, be difficult to reconcile the man’s supposedly numinous status with his actual behaviour. Could such a questionable figure really be a timeless example and inspired by the divine? And doesn’t that kind of question risk undermining the entire, dubious, edifice?

Update: Mary Jackson has more on Mr Husain’s contortions.

Related. And. Also. Plus.

Bankroll my blasphemy.

In an essay on victimhood, self-loathing and pretentious guilt, I wrote:

The free-thinking capitalist societies referred to as “the West” are widely regarded as… the quintessential oppressor… It’s therefore all but unimaginable that Western societies, or representatives thereof, could ever be the good guys in any situation. Should the West need to defend itself and its interests against hostile action, consternation is obligatory and almost any Western response to aggression can be denounced as “disproportionate” on the basis that military advantage should, at best, count for nothing. According to some devotees of this outlook, the inferior (non-Western) force should prevail because of its military disadvantage, as this would be “fair”. This ideological preference is based on a belief that power is intrinsically very, very bad, except when others have it, in which case it suddenly becomes good, regardless of how it may be used. This remarkable sequence of ideas may help explain Iran’s nuclear armament efforts being defended by Kate Hudson of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. 

The director of Indoctrinate U, Evan Coyne Maloney, explores a similar theme, along with the finer points of victimhood’s hierarchy.

Once you understand… the Multicultural Pyramid of Oppression, you can begin to understand how to turn to your advantage certain circumstances that are beyond your control: such as where you were born, the type of genitalia you were born with, into what race you were born, and the religion of your parents. You see, the fewer things you have in common with The Oppressors, the more you can cast yourself as The Victim. And as The Victim, you are virtuous, so there are certain things you can get away with that others can’t: like actually oppressing people.

According to the rules of Multicultural Hierarchy, oppression can be excused if the oppressor comes from a more exotic group — to Western eyes — than the oppressed. If a documentary filmmaker were slaughtered in broad daylight for making a film about domestic violence among, say, Christian evangelists in the American south, an outcry would rightfully ring out from Hollywood denouncing the violence that’s intended to silence legitimate social commentary. But a documentary filmmaker killed for making a film about violence against women perpetrated in the name of Islam isn’t worth any comment at all… Identical crimes would have to be interpreted two different ways, because the only variable that matters is the corpse’s placement on the Multicultural Hierarchy relative to that of the murderer.

Consider what happens when you apply this thinking on a societal level: if we convince ourselves that all of the blame for the current state of the world should be placed at the feet of Western civilisation, then why would any Westerner think that our civilization is worth fighting for? Or even worth saving? The rules of Multicultural Hierarchy require us to pre-emptively surrender, because any crime committed against us by a more worthy Victim is somehow deserved. And if we deserve it, then fighting against what we deserve amounts to fighting the administration of justice.

Maloney’s point is, alas, not entirely flippant. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been told – with remarkable certainty and enthusiasm – that the West “had it coming” (and presumably still does), or that “we” invented slavery, ethnic cleansing, genocide and almost any sufficiently monstrous activity. Attempts to highlight the numerous non-Western precedents for such things, or to suggest that, say, the Crusades didn’t happen in the ahistorical vacuum so often imagined, are unlikely to have much effect. Nor are lengthy expositions on the costly (and apparently unprecedented) efforts by “Westerners” to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire and beyond. The imagining of one’s own society – to which so many souls wish to relocate – as uniquely, irredeemably malign has, for some, become a cultural reflex. And, in the strict sense of the word, a decadent one.

Related: Victimhood Poker.

Richard Chappell has been pondering claims of victimhood in a pseudo-sensitive age. 

We’ve developed a disastrous social norm according to which anyone can win instant brownie points by claiming to be a “victim” – and doubly so if their claim is made qua membership in some “community” (“As an X, I’m offended…”). Maybe the thought is that all communities are equal, so if one is feeling a bit hard done by, this must reflect some injustice, and certainly not any shortcoming on their part.

Indeed. As we’ve discussed here several times, there’s apparently no end of people who want us to feel their pain before we do exactly as they say. It’s the passive-aggressive approach to coercion, and it’s enormously popular among shameless opportunists and the terminally dishonest. The appeal to hurt feelings is particularly noxious as it implies – at least to some who see themselves as champions of the underdog – that the complainant is entitled by default or is somehow being oppressed. Insofar as “communities” are often ideological groupings with unrealistic, even ludicrous, ideas about the world, and with rules regarding what members of said group are permitted to say and do, then “communities” are unlikely to be equal in their merits or their fostering of success. The woes of a given group, whether real or imagined, may depend in very large part on the ideas and beliefs shared by many of its members. 

There’s no more vicious character trait, we’re taught, than being insufficiently “sensitive” to others’ feelings. Manipulative liars are hunky dory – nobody cares about intellectual honesty – but the moment you make someone feel bad, social disapproval is sure to follow. Maybe this is legitimate when it comes to personal interactions: as private individuals, we should of course be considerate of others. But the public sphere should not be governed by the same norms.

Well, civility is generally a good thing and one should, wherever possible, avoid being a horse’s arse. But in the public sphere, one may well be obliged to explain why it is one doesn’t belong, or wish to belong, to a particular “community”, or why one doesn’t accept irrational or unilateral demands, not least regarding the range of facts that can be stated and questions that can be asked. And, however civil, a realistic exchange may still upset those who choose to be upset, prompting howls of indignation and the rending of garments. But hurt feelings aren’t arguments; nor are they proof of wrongdoing. Regardless of how much howling is involved, and regardless of how many people choose to join the howling, some feelings are simply unwarranted, or dishonest, or just thuggery disguised.

Speaking of which.