What a relief. This is my first day off without a mountain of grading hanging over my head, and I was thinking I was going to have to deal with the idiot complaints that I’m a hypocrite because I despise Islam and Christianity, while we ‘social justice warriors’ are supposed to love Islam more and make excuses for the atrocities perpetrated in its name.
Which, when I put it that way, is so patently stupid that I shouldn’t have to even address it. You can regard beheadings with horror and reject the religious justifications for it while recognizing that somebody can be Muslim and feel exactly the same way. But Marcotte spells it all out: Liberals are not soft on, sympathetic towards, or defensive about Islamic terrorism. I’ve banned a surprising number of people this week who have barged in and triumphantly acted is if the fact that the killers in the San Bernardino were radicalized Muslims was a repudiation of the idea that we should regard Muslims as human beings.
This has gone on long enough. It’s time to say it straight: Just because conservatives believe there’s some kind of global battle between Christianity and Islam doesn’t mean that liberals have to agree, much less that they take the “Islam” side of that equation. On the contrary, most liberals see fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam as categorically the same and categorically illiberal in their shared opposition to feminism and modernity.
I’m a vocal atheist. I have not gone soft on Islam or Christianity, yet all this week fools have been pointing out that I destroyed a Koran once, assuming that now I think Islam is a nice religion as some kind of “gotcha” point. I certainly don’t! In the Islamic world, we still see women stoned to death for adultery, people flogged for not believing in gods, and atheists butchered with machetes. There are also lots of Muslims who are uncomfortable with the violence, but because they don’t have to face it directly themselves, will use the excuse of faith to justify the excesses of fanatics. What I object to is that certain atheists (I’m looking at you, Bill Maher and Sam Harris) who use the crimes of the powerful few to condemn the passive majority, and to excuse the use of weapons of mass destruction against entire nations. Oh, but Amanda says that, too.
What liberals object to is the conservative tendency to erase all distinctions between the relatively few Muslims around the world who have violent views and the majority of Muslims who, whether they are conservative or not, do not agree with ISIS or Al Qaeda’s distortion of Islam. Imagine how Christians would feel if liberals blamed Christianity, categorically, for the attack on Planned Parenthood. They would be angry and they would have a right to be. After all, a lot of Christians are liberal and believe abortion is a perfectly acceptable choice. And many others may disapprove of abortion, but they think it should be legal and they generally support Planned Parenthood’s overall reproductive health care mission. There are even some Christians who are anti-choice but disapprove of the heated rhetoric that fueled this attack. Just as it’s important to maintain these distinctions when talking about Christianity, it’s equally important to keep these distinctions in mind when talking about Islam.
There’s nothing in that logic that suggests that liberals have some secret googly-eyes for demagoguing radical Muslim fundamentalists, anymore than we love Pat Robertson. On the contrary, we tend to see them as basically the same kind of misogynist, homophobic authoritarians who hide behind God to get their way. To suggest otherwise is not just dishonest, but irresponsible, since it can hinder the very diplomatic efforts we need to keep people alive.
But for the radicalized atheists who use their atheism as a club to bash whole cultures, I have some other shocks for you. You’re free to use these as excuses to accuse me of hypocrisy, too.
I enjoyed The God Delusion
While I sometimes thinks he goes too far in dismissing the role of religion in supporting social violence, Scott Atran
If we were to honestly look at the people who should be a positive influence on modern atheism, we should include Annie Laurie Gaylor
I know what’s coming next, and allow me to preempt the next round of accusations of hypocrisy. In 2009, I gave a talk to the American Humanists which the usual loons will cite as evidence that I wanted to be one of those Four Horsemen. They haven’t read it very carefully. It’s the opposite of what they claim, and it says many things I’m still saying today: I mention Boyer and Jacoby and others, and wonder why they aren’t given ‘horses’ of their own; I point out the poverty of the narrow perspective of our leadership; I don’t want to be a leader, I want to see a popular atheist movement with humanist values, values that are too often trampled by a tiny clique of right-wing sympathizers who think they are in charge of atheism.
I actually ended that talk with a statement about the only way I want to be a ‘horseman’.
So let me close with one more Bible quote that will answer a question I raised at the very beginning, which was, why only four horsemen? Revelation 9:16 is very useful. It says, “The number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.” You heard it, the horsemen need two hundred million riders. So my final message is this: humanists, mount up.
I still think this is our major problem, that we’ve allowed the media to think that the popes of atheism are two people named Richard and Sam, especially when so many of their views are embarrassingly regressive. And especially when they’ve become so representative of the loudest assholes in the popular approach to Muslims.
In other words: using the crimes of the powerful few to advocate the crimes of the more powerful fewer.
Ah, the ol’ “Your words contradict those of the strawman I made. The one I call by your name.
“Ergo, you are a hypocrite.”
Yeah, QE-fuckin’-D, geniuses. This sort of “attack” is an answer to Voltaire’s prayer.
Thanks to Amanda Marcotte for eloquently expressing somethting I’ve thought since I first heard that cultural struggle thesis: The cultural conflict that will determine the course of history isn’t Christianity versus Islam; it’s religious fundamentalism of all kinds versus reason.
Whatever happened to Dan Dennet and his horse? Too sane and liberal to keep inside the tent?
Dennett has been active in his own way…he’s retiring (or is retired?) from Tufts, but he did set up that forum for apostate priests, remember, and that’s still going strong, from what I hear. But it’s a project that entails confidentiality, not grandstanding.
It’s not: religious extremism is merely one chunk of a much larger problem: the conflict is sectarian supremacism of all stripes (religious, ideological, sociologic) versus humanism.
Which is why it’s more important HOW we believe, and not WHAT we believe, ie. critical thinking.
I think one of the problems comes from if I say “Islam is crap!” some people claim I am being racist when in fact I didn’t say Muslims are crap just their ideas about the world.
I do but then I consider the habit of various US states sticking lethal needles into people just as barbaric. I feel sure that many Muslims and feel exactly the same way.
You mean “all religion is crap!” All religious people aren’t crap, just their ideas about the world.
Also, their ideas about how they should get ideas about the world. If they shared some reasonable epistemic and ethical standards, one religious person would be able to explain to another why the latter’s beliefs are wrong. But it’s not hard for anybody to see that’s a double-edged sword for the religious, since the first is just as vulnerable to that charge. So instead of a calm and honest dialogue that makes some kind of progress, a rising that would lift all boats so to speak, there’s oppression, violence, and ever more schisms about pointless nonsense. That’s the sort of thing people resort to, when they don’t have a better way to resolve their problems. Other ideologies work like this too, but religions are especially good at it, with an especially long tradition of making sure there’s no way to solve a problem (or even to recognize that something is a problem), since the only move you have to make in this game is to claim that something is an article of faith.
It would be one thing if they just had crappy, false beliefs about the world. That can be fixed of course, if there’s some kind of shared understanding of the need for evidence and logic to support an idea. But you won’t get far at all, when they’re resistant to basic standards like that. Even if it turned out to be the right idea, not crappy at all, I think we’d see there’s a big problem if the idea came out of nowhere or was supported by nothing. Accepting that kind of nonsense, as religious people do, opens the floodgates to any bad idea anybody can dream up, and it leaves them with no defense. And instead of recognizing that and admitting their failures and trying to do better, they lash out.
I think much of the pushback you recieve when saying that, is that the comment greatly resembles things said by those that do conflate ‘muslim’ with ‘Islam’, and esepcially those that conflate ‘muslim’ with ‘Islamic terrorist’.
@ # 9, jrkrideau
Well, to be fair, lethal injection is more humane. For the people watching. As far as what it does to the person executed, it’s pretty much the worst method the advocates of the death penalty can get away with using to kill people. For them, that fact that a high percentage of the condemned die in pain and fear is a feature, not a bug. But, because it’s generally quiet and “clean,” they get to pretend it’s not every bit as horrific as slowly sawing a person’s head off with a hunting knife.
vucoklak — I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s very possible to have a completely pain-free lethal injection that would be more humane than almost any other method. I’m very anti-death penalty, so I’m not saying this to promote better execution methods. I’m saying this because the fact that the states using lethal injection don’t use the obvious, painless, well-known methods available at veterinary surgeries around the globe shows that they don’t actually give a damn about being humane.
Although I’m an avowed atheist and would love to see religion relegated to a harmless fringe activity like stamp collecting, I am not all that interested in proselytising for atheism. I’d much rather convert people to secular humanism. I can live and work with religious people quite happily provided they don’t get illiberal legal privileges for their beliefs.
One of the problems with bashing whole cultures is you make enemies of those members of the culture who had to this point fit in to our culture. If we do as some of the wingnuts want, putting Muslim names into databases, keeping them from having meaningful jobs, making them a despised minority, we will create the terrorists we fear so much right here. Not in some far-away country, but here.
And we will blame it on them.
Do they get many of the ordinary Muslims watching the public executions in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan? Are those spectators victims of the regime or part of the problem?
Are those spectators victims of the regime or part of the problem?
Yes. They are both. This applies to all toxic systems. People can be more a part of a problem than their are a victim, or vice versa, but no one living within the system is free of blame or suffering from it.
That’s a recurring problem: often when someone says “Islam is crap!” much more often than not s/he means “The brown-skinned foreign followers of this foreign religion must be beaten into craven submission”
Likewise, often when someone says “all religion is crap!”, whet s/he actually means is “I refuse to acknowledge the moronic religious rubes as my equals“: it’s not the islamophobia that revealed Bill Maher as the authoritarian douche he is to me (that came later and left me utterly unsuprised): it’s his “Americans are stupid” rant: when someone starts saying “the majority are morons“, it’s only a matter of time before they start advocating the establishment of a dictatorship tasked with violently keeping the “marching morons” submissive and docile.
***
Speaking of lethal injection…
I was shot the products they give in America to kill detainees twice: what you use for lethal injection in the US is used on my side of the pond in surgery. In my case they needed to keep my right arm completely paralyzed during a pair of hand surgeries because the surgeons could not risk a sudden case of synclonus while they were cutting open my filled-with-very- delicate-muscles-and-tendons right hand.
Before the first surgery, they asked me if I had a heart condition: “Vous savez le produit qu’ils donnent aux condamnés à mort Américains? C’est ce qu’on va vous mettre dans les veines maintenant. On ne va pas vous administrer la dose léthale, mais si vous êtes cardiaques vous risquez de nous faire un arrêt quand on vous enlèvera le garrot” they told me.
After the two surgeries… I spent the six month chewing on painkillers like if these were candies.
Painless my ass.
Frightening all over again. When euthanising non-human animals, isn’t the drug used a deliberately lethal dose of anaesthetic?
You mean, they choose not to use this but instead they torture the condemned to death on purpose by having them paralysed and in great pain? Sick all over again.
Yes, an as noted by vucodlak: it’s done on purpose: the pro-death penalty want people to be tortured to death, they just lack the guts to acknowledge their own cruelty.
There are people on the Left who support Islamism, though; presumably through rank ignorance in this case, but they do exist, and need to be challenged. Example:
http://quillette.com/2015/12/06/the-shame-and-the-disgrace-of-the-pro-islamist-left/
Fortunately that challenge, in this case, has been robust.
What I find bizarre is that so many people want to make this a war against Islam. Do they really want to make enemies of 1.6 billion people? Do they really want Muslims to choose between the fundamentalism they claim is the only “true Islam” and rejecting Islam altogether, because even if 90% reject Islam (which would never happen), that’s still 160 million potential jihadists?
I dislike fundamentalist religion of all kinds, but the only solution, even if it takes far longer than we would want, is the secularization of society, and the freeing of people from the bonds of religion. and like it or not, that’s not going to happen without help from moderate Muslims everywhere.
Well yes, and you can see that in action a lot, when some Christians take a fairly specific statement and go on whining forever about how not all Christians are like that and you shouldn’t say such a thing and blah blah. It’s about the same, minus the right to be mad part.
Regarding lethal injection-
I read of a NASA accident. At one time, NASA had the practice of filling a compartment with pure nitrogen if there was a risk of fire during testing or whatever. But, once they forgot to purge the compartment when finished, some technicians walked into it and passed out, two died. It seems the human body does not detect suffocation directly, by lack of oxygen. It detects it indirectly, by a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood. Breathing pure nitrogen carries away CO2 just fine, so people don’t notice, experience no distress, they just pass out. NASA switched to using a mix of 95% nitrogen, 5% CO2; people get a whiff of that and gasp, run away. There is one state, Nebraska, that now uses pure nitrogen as a means of execution. IMHO, if you are going to use capital punishment at all, that would be a humane and relatively simple way to do it; no doctor’s prescription or participating pharmacies required.
Yes, left has a problem with condemning barbaric practices of Islam, criticizing of Islam and also has a habit of shutting down anyone who criticizes Islam as a bigot, “Islamophobe”, racist, etc. etc., you know the drill.
It’s funny this is coming up while Maryam Namazie has been target of censorship by the *left* because supposed she is offensive, or bigoted:
“… both the Feminist Society and LGBTQ+ Society of Goldsmiths have come out with solidarity messages – for the Islamic Society – and of course not for me. “
I don’t have a problem characterizing criticism of Islam as racist or bigoted when a lot of it is, in fact, racist and bigoted.
PZ and a lot of people I consider fairly good on the issue still criticize islam, sure. They’re critical of religion in general, and are capable of understanding that most muslims compartmentalize their religion the same way every other religion does.
What they don’t do is pretend that funny brown people from islamic countries like my family are threats or responsible for what some people on the other side of the planet do.
But you know what? Give me a year where my parents don’t get a brick thrown at them or profiled at airports, and maybe I’ll soften my views on criticism of Islam.
So, no one is going to take issue with Marcotte suggesting that the actions of ISIS are a “distortion of Islam”? Oh, how I wish they would distort scripture. It would almost certainly lead to a more peaceful world. And you are being a hypocrite, PZ. You don’t get to chastise people for criticising a regressive culture if you have previously gone out of your way to offend said culture.
Also, can we stop pretending that all religions are equally barbaric? It’s perfectly reasonable to point out differences between ideologies, yet you’d think acknowledging this rather obvious fact is akin to walking around in a white sheet while quoting Mein Kampf. People on the far left will tolerate the most vile, illiberal behaviour so long as the behaviour’s source is associated with a group they perceive to be oppressed.
@Vivec:
I don’t have a problem characterizing criticism of Islam as racist or bigoted when a lot of it is,
I’m actually curious how criticism of *Islam* can be racist. BTW, I don’t consider what Harris does 100% criticism of Islam. Sure, he criticizes Islam and I don’t have big problems with his arguments there (even though it often shows he does have a shallow understanding of Islam) but the problematic parts of Harris’s ideas are where he parrots right-wing talking points on Muslims, such as siding with Cruz on accepting Christian refugees.
Back to this article, some of Left’s problem with Islam shows up even in Marcotte’s piece:
Sure, most muslims don’t like ISIS but at least judging my own country, most muslims in my country live in a culture of patriarchy, they do not understand the rights of the minorities, or the freedom of speech. Left’s problem is that they fail to stand up for liberal values when dealing with other cultures.
Around the Canadian election this picture was going viral, mostly by well-intentioned while left/liberals. But it was pissing me off so much because white liberals have no problem identifying and battling gendered toys or clothing when it comes to their own kids (which is very good) but apparently here it does not cross their mind that this is really gendered clothing and patriarchy in action.
The vast majority of muslims are non-white, and white muslims are seldom the target of anti-muslim profiling and violence. Ergo, racist.
Also, not seeing a problem with that picture. Parents can dress toddlers how they want.
James MacDonald:
I’d prefer it if scriptures were ignored entirely, and distortions themselves aren’t helpful. I don’t think a person who’s being sincere, honest and thoughtful would wish for that. So what do you actually want?
I’d say all theology is equally wrong, meaning no version of Islam is more correct in that sense, and we have no business taking one side over another. Yet, because religions aren’t merely theological but also toss morality and other issues into the mix (that may even be the dominant feature of a religion for most people), they can of course be more or less correct in that sense. So, if there’s something morally acceptable to be found in some version of Islam, it’s appropriate to criticize other versions which distort it into something unacceptable. So, this shit gets fairly complicated, if you’re going to take issue with that way of characterizing the problem. What exactly is your issue with it supposed to be? You don’t say. Are we supposed to read your mind?
Wait… did you make a clear, coherent or substantive point about anything? I must have missed it.
What are the differences between these ideologies, and which ideologies are you talking about? You haven’t acknowledged any rather obvious facts here. You’re just whining about “people on the far left,” who aren’t actually responsible for your vacuous bullshit. If it’s perfectly reasonable, then have some fucking reasons and fucking do it already. Who’s stopping you?
The vast majority of muslims are non-white, and white muslims are seldom the target of anti-muslim profiling and violence. Ergo, racist.
How is that criticism of Islam? Profiling and anti-muslim violence is by very nature *not* criticism of Islam.
Also, not seeing a problem with that picture. Parents can dress toddlers how they want.
I’m sure if it were a white parent dressing his/her white daughter with a shirt that said “I like make up. Math is Hard” you would not say those words. But this, from looks of it, is an Islamic/African dress that says “My body needs to be covered up, so men don’t get tempted” and it seems fine?
lotharloo:
Don’t be so sure. I would say that it is and should be legal for a parent to do that. We can do a lot of other things to address such issues, and saying they simply can’t do that is not going to work. Not in a way that basically anybody wants.
Is that what it says on the tag? Or what process are we supposed to use to interpret that image as “saying” something like that? Do you think that perhaps you’re neglecting one very salient aspect of the photo, that those two different-looking babies are getting along with another, because they haven’t (yet) become obsessed with superficial differences in their appearance, and that this is in a very general sense a good thing?
Is there some general objection to clothing that covers a large area of a person’s body? If it’s not what you deem to be sufficiently revealing for a toddler, however the fuck that’s supposed to be determined, then the explanation must be patriarchy? I mean, let’s leave cold-weather clothing out of it (although that’s certainly important in Canada), and suppose I showed you a picture of a dude wearing a suit: almost entirely covered, except for the head (but perhaps the guy’s also wearing a hat). What would that “say” to you about anything? Should men wear more revealing clothing, or less revealing clothing, or is there nothing in particular that they should do because it doesn’t actually matter? Are there any other explanations you could think of, for why suits exist and why some people wear them?
What if women/men/girls/boys of whatever age did need to expose a certain amount of skin, in order to satisfy your concerns that doing otherwise might be a symptom of a patriarchal culture or a symptom of any other sort of cultural problem? Given the caption of the photo — you’re so good at “reading” obscure visual clues, that I hope you can read an actual language — do you think it’s appropriate to make certain forms of clothing illegal? If not, how is this supposed to be relevant to any legitimate function of the government (Canadian or otherwise)? Shouldn’t a government stay out of this kind of thing, unless there’s a serious reason to involve itself in whatever people decide to wear and a reasonable way to enforce whatever its decisions happen to be?
Because a large amount of the criticism of islam amounts to “those brown savages in the middle east really need to stay out of our christian countries” (See: literally every GOP candidate)
Also, still not seeing the problem there. Parents can dress toddlers as they like, and while I might disagree with their choice of t-shirt in your example, I 100% support their freedom to dress their kid in it.
Also, just gonna say. The day anyone makes a fine for wearing a burqa or a hijab is the day I start wearing one in protest, and I’m about as atheist as you can get.
And, as a corollary, that would be just as much of a free choice on my part as it is on the part of my numerous friends and family who do wear one.
My sister wears a headscarf, and she’s an Atheist too. My Dad/community never threatened her to wear one and she was never a believer; its just part of our cultural garb that she finds appealing. It’s about as much a religious garment to her and most of my friends as a sports jersey.
lotharloo
It is racist when someone uses criticisms purely for demonising brown-skinned immigrants. For example, most far-right Euopean parties criticise islam for being against gender equality and LGBT equality, while those same parties are ALSO against same rights for women and LGBT people. In this instance, it is clear those far-right parties don’t care one bit about those points, but just use it as a cudgel to beat those ‘foreigners’ with it, and advance their racist agenda.
I’d like to know. If one of them was dressed as Rich Uncle Pennybags, and they were getting along as babies are apt to do, with the same caption plastered on it, should leftists start ranting belligerently about how we can’t find a way to get along, because free market capitalism must be destroyed? Why? It’d be a silly fucking thing for a baby to wear, I’ll grant you that, but (1) who gives a fuck and (2) what the fuck are we supposed to do about it?
A few weeks back just after the Paris shootings, I was listening to the BBC World News on the radio between shopping stops. They were doing a segment on the St. Denis area shootings. Why was it targeted? Simple. ISIS wants to stop migration/assimilation of Muslims into Europe, as they want people to be stuck between either death or submitting to their will. Everything out in black and white.
Assimilation means shades of gray. St. Denis was an area with a rich multi-cultural background. It is the exact opposite of what ISIS wants. So, how does one oppose ISIS? By stopping the bigotry and persecution of people from certain areas, and certain religions. Allow them to to migrate and settle where they feel safe. Welcome them.
If you want to stop immigration of Muslims, are afraid of Islam due to the small number of zealots, who are also despised in their community, and want nothing to do with them, YOU ARE NOTHING BUT TOOL FOR ISIS. You support that which you wish to have demolished. You are stupid and xenophobic.
The way to fight ISIS is free immigration and multi-culturalism. Have trouble with that? Move to ISIS controlled territory. You will fit in.
What a lame attempt at a “gotcha” though.
“I know you guys support freedom of speech, BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS SPEECH??? BET YOU LIBERALS HATE IT NOW HUH?”
Also, just gonna say. The day anyone makes a fine for wearing a burqa or a hijab is the day I start wearing one in protest, and I’m about as atheist as you can get.
Burqa is a mobile prison, the symbol of Islamic patriarchy and a tool adopted by *men* to erase women from society. Banning might not be the solution but it is abusrd to propose tolerance for burqa. Tolerance towards sexism and bigory is not part of liberal values.
Also, burqa does not appear anywhere in Quran. The only verses that deal with veiling of women are those on prophet’s own wives (because apparently the prophet did not care about veiling other women; only his “own”). But of course men as owners of women in Islamic tradition, forced their wives and daughters to cover up.
My sister wears a headscarf, and she’s an Atheist too. My Dad/community never threatened her to wear one and she was never a believer; its just part of our cultural garb that she finds appealing. It’s about as much a religious garment to her and most of my friends as a sports jersey.
Good for them. My mom has been stopped many times for having her hair being slightly outside the head cover. My dad has been berated because of it since “the reason for a woman’s deviation from proper hijab is man’s lack of honor”. My sister has been arrested for getting a ride from university back home with a classmate of hers. My aunt was been arrested for improper hijab and threatened with lashes. My cousin, who is very rebelious, has had multiple run ins with the moral police, including arrests, fines and also once for not putting her pants *above* her boots in winter time. My other aunt has been arrested for similar reasons. My uncle has been arrested for shaking hands with a female friend of his in public. One of the supervisors in my university objected to two Master students of opposite sex working on a joint project, and proposed that they get a temporary marriage before starting the project. And pretty much every woman that I know has been berated, mostly rudely, in public for not following proper hijab. My cousin was also denied her passport until she showed up with a chador to obtain it.
So yeah, good for them.
I’d like to know. If one of them was dressed as Rich Uncle Pennybags, and they were getting along as babies are apt to do, with the same caption plastered on it, should leftists start ranting belligerently about how we can’t find a way to get along, because free market capitalism must be destroyed? Why? It’d be a silly fucking thing for a baby to wear, I’ll grant you that, but (1) who gives a fuck and (2) what the fuck are we supposed to do about it?
I don’t even get what this is the point behind this. “Rich Uncle Pennybags” is not really a symbol of capitalism and I don’t think liberals want free market capitalism destroyed, only regulated. And about your questions: (1) So you don’t give a fuck about subjucation of non-white women? (2) And would be too much to ask to accept that Hijab is by very definition a sexist cultural practice that demans much higher standards of modesty from women compared to men?
It’s not absurd at all. Freedom of expression and religious freedom are things I value very highly. As such, I will always oppose burqa bans.
While unfortunate, none of your second paragraph is an argument for banning the garment, it’s an argument for reforming your legal system and opposing fundamentalism, both of which I’m sure everyone here supports.
Look at France. There’s a fine for wearing a burqa or any such garment. Guess what? Women just pay the fine and keep wearing it, because banning the garment does nothing to address the cultural pressure to wear it from their fundamentalist families
No? We just respect their freedom of expression and religious freedom to wear what they want.
Any ban on islamic garb would also affect my family and friends that wear it as a cultural thing, so you’re painting with too broad a brush.
You don’t get to infringe on their rights for a reason that doesn’t even address the real problem.
Yes, it would be too much. It’s literally just a headscarf. Whatever society associates with it is a problem with society, not the garment.
Might as well ban daisy dukes and thongs for being a sexist cultural practice that demands women expose themselves for men’s viewing pleasure ;)
Look at France. There’s a fine for wearing a burqa or any such garment. Guess what? Women just pay the fine and keep wearing it, because banning the garment does nothing to address the cultural pressure to wear it from their fundamentalist families
I agree that banning is not the solution. And the biggest reason is that it punishes the women who are the victims of the patriarchal system of Islam. So I am not talking about banning. I am talking about liberals admitting that hijab does not mix with liberal values and it is a tool of a sexist and patriarchal ideology. Hijab implicitly (mostly in western countries) or explicitly (mostly in Islamic theocracies) tells women they have to cover up because their uncovered existence makes men lustful, and the society corrupt.
No? We just respect their freedom of expression and religious freedom to wear what they want.
So a young girl is born and she is told from a very young age about how and why she should cover up. She is so indoctrinated that hijab becomes part of her identity and ultimately becomes her choice. I do not have a problem with her choice, but I do have a problem with the ideology that promotes indoctrination of children. She is a grown up adult and while there should be legal safeguards that should intervene if she is pressured physically or emotionally, as long as she makes the choice, I will respect it. But do not respect the ideology that teaches the highly asymmetric demands of modesty.
In Ontario, women protested the law against topless women in public and they won. That was a step in the right direction. It is absurd to subject women and men to different standards of modesty. It does not go well with libral values.
Might as well ban daisy dukes and thongs for being a sexist cultural practice that demands women expose themselves for men’s viewing pleasure ;)
Is there a “religion of thongs”? Is there a religion that teaches “Girls starting from age of 9, must begin wearing thongs, or risk being tormented forever in hottest fires of hell?” If there were such a religion, and if it were wide-spread, I would agree that then “thongs” would be an instrument of a patriarchal system.
If you’re going to declare that there’s no patriarchal forces that condition and encourage women to dress provocatively in western culture simply because they’re not religious garments, I think our disagreement on this matter is going to be irreconcilable.
It’s a pretty well recorded phenomenon that women felt pressured to “act sexy” or dress provocatively to avoid raising the ire of men. That this is considered a relatively mundane conclusion by most mainstream liberal activism shows how far removed you are from it.
Consider the huge amount of misogynist insults in western culture that either accuse women of not having enough sex (ie calling them prudes or unfuckable) or of having it with the wrong people (ie calling them sluts or whores). Much of the abuse women receive has a distinctly sexual angle, often unrelated to the rest of the topic.
To try and claim there’s no social pressure for women to dress themselves in a way that pleases the male gaze spits in the face of the sociology and feminism that has studied that very fact.
@Vivec:
This debate is really getting to the point of having no fruitful engagement. I’m sad to hear that you cannot admit that hijab and various other forms of subjugation of women are not in line with liberal values. Western culture is not perfect but Islamic teaching are much worse and if you are going to ignore the second and attack the first one, while at the same time constantly making up strawman arguments, then it shows that you actually do not care about minorities.
To try and claim there’s no social pressure for women to dress themselves in a way that pleases the male gaze spits in the face of the sociology and feminism that has studied that very fact.
There is social pressure in the West for women to look beautiful. And yes, it is not symmetric. A man who does not take care of his appearance will suffer much less socially, and economically, and professionally compare to a woman. But it is not institutionalized, it is not religious, women are not threatened with an eternity of fire, torture and damnation if they don’t. There are no holy texts of “Western culture” that tells women to look pretty or risk hell. Comparing the situation of the western women to muslim women show how little you know or care about the muslim women.