Religious do not have monopoly on virtue, Queen tells synod

Riazat Butt

Fonte: Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/23/queen-synod-virtue

Believers and atheists equally able to contribute to country's prosperity, says monarch

People of faith do not have a monopoly on virtue as British society was now "more diverse and secular", the Queen told the Church of England today in an address to its governing body.

Speaking at Church House, central London, she told members of General Synod that believers and atheists were equally able to contribute to the prosperity and wellbeing of the country.

The Queen, who is supreme governor of the Church of England, said: "In our more diverse and secular society, the place of religion has come to be a matter of lively discussion. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none."

But, recalling the words of Pope Benedict XVI from his UK visit last September, she said churches "and the other great faith traditions" retained the potential to inspire "great enthusiasm, loyalty and a concern for the common good".

Around 480 clergy, laity and bishops are gathered in central London to debate and vote on issues and policies affecting the life of the church.

At times the meetings stray from the Church of England stereotype of sandal-wearing niceties, descending into acrimony and outright hostility, especially over contentious issues such as women bishops.

Around 50 traditionalist clergy and five bishops have announced their intention to convert to Roman Catholicism, following a Vatican initiative, because they are unhappy with the level of protection from female ministry offered in the draft legislation that permits the ordination of female bishops.

The Queen referred to this tension in her address, saying synod had "many issues to resolve" in order to remain "equipped for the effective pursuit of its mission and ministry", but that this difficulty might in fact revitalise the church.

"Some will no doubt involve difficult, even painful, choices. But Christian history suggests that times of growth and spiritual vigour have often coincided with periods of challenge and testing."

She made no mention of the royal wedding, which will be held at Westminster Abbey, the location of that morning's eucharist, but the subject was very much at the forefront of everyone's mind, not least because of the suspension of a Church of England bishop and synod member who made disparaging remarks about Prince William and Kate Middleton's engagement on his Facebook page.

Pete Broadbent, a suffragan in Willesden, said there ought to be a party in Calais "for all good republicans" to avoid the "nauseating tosh" surrounding the royal wedding. After criticising royalty for a history of broken marriages and a "corrupt and sexist" hereditary principle, he then went on to attack the "gutter press" for "persecuting" the royal family.

Yesterday Broadbent apologised for his remarks, calling them "deeply offensive". But it was too late and his diocesan superior, the bishop of London, asked him to withdraw from public ministry until further notice.

The public outcry – from clergy and politicians alike – over the Facebook posts may have prompted the archbishop of Canterbury to tell the Queen, to prolonged applause, that he spoke "on behalf of everyone here" in "expressing our delight" at the "family news announced last week".

An Interview with Christopher Hitchens, Part II

Fonte: Blog de Michael J. Totten
http://www.michaeltotten.com/2010/01/an-interview-with-christopher-hitchens-part-ii.php

Journalist and author Christopher Hitchens visited my hometown of Portland, Oregon last week, and I interviewed him at Jake's Grill downtown over glasses of Johnnie Walker Black Label. My old friend and sometimes traveling companion Sean LaFreniere joined us and contributed a few questions of his own. You can read Part I here.

MJT: The big story in 2010 will be Iran. We have this revolution there—I'm not afraid to call it that.

Hitchens: You're right, I think it is one.

MJT: We have Iran's terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon. And we have the regime's nuclear weapons program.

Hitchens: Also, in each case, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard—the Pasdaran—is the controlling force.

MJT: Hezbollah is the Mediterranean branch of the Revolutionary Guards.

Hitchens: We have the same bunch overseas where they're not wanted, in Lebanon and even among the Palestinians, conducting assassination missions abroad, shooting down young Iranians in the streets of a major city, and controlling an illegal thermonuclear weapons program. We do have a target. All this has been accumulated under one heading.

MJT: Yes.

Hitchens: I thought that was worth pointing out. It's not "the regime" or "the theocracy." It's now very clear that the Revolutionary Guards have committed a coup in all but name—well, I name it, but it hasn't yet been named generally. They didn't rig an election. They didn't even hold one.

MJT: They never counted the votes. There's no "recount" to be done.

Hitchens: The seizure of power by a paramilitary gang that just so happens to be the guardian and the guarantor and the incubator of the internationally illegal weapons program. If that doesn't concentrate one's mind, I don't know what will.

MJT: If the Obama Administration calls you up and says, "Christopher, we need you to come in here, we need your advice." What would you tell them?

Hitchens: I would say, as I did with Saddam Hussein—albeit belatedly, I tried to avoid this conclusion—that any fight you're going to have eventually, have now. Don't wait until they're more equally matched. It doesn't make any sense at all.

The existence of theocratic regimes that have illegally acquired weapons of mass destruction, that are war with their own people, that are exporting their violence to neighboring countries, sending death squads as far away as Argentina to kill other people as well as dissident members of their own nationality—the existence of such regimes is incompatible with us. If there is going to be a confrontation, we should pick the time, not them.

We're saying, "Let's give them time to get ready. Then we'll be more justified in hitting them." That's honestly what they're saying. When we have total proof, when we can see them coming for us, we'll feel okay about resisting.

MJT: They don't think about it that way.

Hitchens: They don't know that's what they're saying, but it actually is.

MJT: They're crossing their fingers and hoping it never has to happen at all.

Hitchens: Unless an Obama Administration person can say to me, "No, the confrontation can be avoided, there isn't really a casus belli here," unless they could persuade me of that, I'd say that once we've decided this, the fight should be on our terms. We should not allow them to get stronger and acquire more of the sinews of warfare.

They'll say I'm asking for war, but I'll say no. I'm not. I'm recognizing that someone is looking for war. We should be firm enough to say "Alright." We didn't look for it. We've tried everything short of war for a long time. Everything. We went to the International Atomic Energy Authority and found them cheating everywhere. Their signature on the Nonproliferation Treaty is worthless. We have the names of members of the Iranian government who are wanted for sending assassins to Europe and Argentina. We know what they've been doing to subvert Lebanon, to make trouble in Iraq.

MJT: Let me take the Obama Administration's side. I'll be the Devil's Advocate.

Hitchens: Sure.

MJT: If we actually strike Iran, it is a near-certainty that they'll instigate violence in Lebanon, in Iraq, and in Israel. That's at a minimum. There will be violence in Iran, too, obviously, because we'll be attacking sites in Iran. It's a near certainty that there will be terrible violence in all of these countries. If we cross our fingers and hope for the best, there's a real possibility that there won't be much violence in any of these countries. Within a year or two, the Iranian government might not even exist.

It's a gamble no matter what we do, but it's actually possible that we can avoid war altogether. The administration isn't crazy for thinking we can muddle through this thing.

Hitchens: I know how to do that Devil's Advocate calculus, as well.

MJT: I don't even know that I'm playing Devil's Advocate. I don't know what we should do.

Hitchens: There are two clocks running in Persia. One is the emergence of a huge civil society movement—which, by the way, I think was partly created by the invasion of Iraq. The Shia authorities—in Iran, Montazeri, and in Iraq, Sistani—don't take the Velayat-e Faqih view of Khomeini. National minorities like the Kurds and Azeris are also very impatient with the regime.

MJT: Forty-nine percent of Iranians aren't Persians.

Hitchens: In the long run, the regime is doomed. The other clock that's running is that of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which is actually the counter-revolution. These are people who go out into the street and rape and blind and kill young Iranians. They control the nuclear clock, which is running faster. They hope that by acquiring the weapons of mass destruction they can insulate themselves from regime-change. At least this helps us to narrow the target a bit.

How many Iranian dissidents are really going to be nationalistically upset by an intervention that comes in and removes the Revolutionary Guards?

MJT: I don't think very many, but I could be wrong.

Hitchens: Would we have the nerve to say that was the objective, or would we simply say we're only talking about sites and don't care about Iranian freedom? We'd need to have a generous view of the situation, and we'd need to coordinate it with NATO.

The people who most want this to happen are the Sunni Arab governments.

MJT: All of them. The only Arab country that doesn't want it is Syria, but it isn't Sunni. It's an Alawite government.

Hitchens: If the Iranian Revolutionary Guards get the bomb, they won't use it on Israel. They're not so stupid. They certainly won't use it on us.

MJT: I agree.

Hitchens: But they'll use it to blackmail Bahrain first, then Qatar.

What's the point of being a superpower if we say to our allies there's nothing we can do about this, that they're on their own?

LaFreniere: Can I say something?

MJT: Sure.

LaFreniere: I lived for a while with some Iranian students in Copenhagen. We had some conversations about regime-change, how they felt about their government, how they felt about America. They aren't in favor of their government, but they have a deep sense of pride. They were partly able to overlook the hideousness of their regime, especially when it came to nuclear weapons. If Iran acquired them, the world would have to take Iranian opinion seriously. They really liked that idea. These weren't thuggish kids. They were nice students in Denmark. They were of two minds about this situation.

MJT: That was before last June.

LaFreniere: It was.

MJT: I don't know how much that matters.

Hitchens: Their enemy, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, conducted a military coup in Iran last year. It is the author of all the atrocities against women, political prisoners, students, Kurds, and the like. It is identifiably the incubator of the nuclear program, so we can disaggregate things a little that way.

Second—although it's a sad thing—there is international law.

MJT: What does that even mean?

Hitchens: If Iran is found to have broken every single one of its agreements, the legal case exists. It may not be a casus belli, but it may be enough for a blockade.

Unfortunately, the votes of the people inside don't count. We know in Burma, as we knew in Iraq and South Africa, that the people are not with the regime. But if they all had been, it wouldn't have made any difference unless international law is determined by the people in the target regime, which it can't be. They don't get a vote.

I sat with some Iranians in Isfahan, with a family I was staying with. They were secular and they served me booze with one of their cousins who was there visiting. She wasn't wearing a full burkha, but a veil. She said the least during our discussion, but at the end she said the most eloquent thing, and she was obviously very tortured about it. She said, "Do you think the Americans could come just for a couple of weeks, remove the regime, and then go?"

And I said, "Oh, darling." Well, actually I didn't say that to her. [Laughs.] I said, "If only." If she could have her wish, she would have it both ways. She didn't want the Americans in her country, but she did want the regime taken away, as if on a magic carpet. I couldn't tell her I could help. It's the same with your block neighbors in Copenhagen.

LaFreniere: If we told them we were just going to do a regime-change and leave, they might have been fine with it.

Hitchens: Which is it they feel most strongly about? Their patriotism, or their allegiance to the regime?

MJT: This is almost like a philosophical bull session in college. It's not going to happen. It's just not.

Here's the real question: What would be your advice to the Israelis? They might actually do something. We won't.

Hitchens: It comes to the same thing.

MJT: If Netanyahu asked you personally for advice, would you give him the same answer that you'd give Obama?

Hitchens: In terms of the repercussions, it doesn’t matter. The United States will be accused of doing the work of the Jews no matter what.

MJT: And vice-versa. All the same negatives apply in each case.

Hitchens: The Israelis blew up the Iraqi reactor, and thank God they did.

MJT: Yes, no kidding.

Hitchens: They overflew Jordan for about ten minutes. The Turks aren't going to let them use their air space. They'll have to overfly Iraq. Everyone will know.

There was a great moment in Doctor Zhivago. They get the news that the czar has been killed, and all his family. One character says it was such a cruel deed, and Zhivago says, "It's to show there is no going back."

Destroy the Revolutionary Guard and some people will complain forever that it was a terrible intervention in Iranian internal affairs…

MJT: …but the Iranian Revolutionary Guard would be gone.

Hitchens: It's not as bad as having them running Iran and its nuclear program and stoning women and blinding girls. They rape boys in jail.

We can simply say, "We're not going to stay. We're handing the country over to you. We're not occupying. We don't want to stay. We can't wait to get out. And you've been de-Revolutionary-Guardized. Cry all you want."

We will have done them a favor, and ourselves. We have rights, too. The international community has rights. The U.N. has rights. The U.S. has rights. The IAEA has rights. The Iranians made deals with all of them, and they broke them.

MJT: You supported Bush to some extent, and you also support Obama to some extent.

Hitchens: Yes. I think Obama is tougher than he looks, by the way.

MJT: You should be able to compare their foreign policies honestly, without being a partisan hack. I know it's a bit early—you've got eight years of Bush policies to compare with one year of Obama's—but let's hear it. What do you think?

Hitchens: There's something everyone has forgotten, and Obama has never tried to remind them. He doesn't get credit because he's never asked for it. Do you remember when the American crew was taken by the pirates off the coast of Somalia? It's the same country of origin of the axe-wielding maniac who just tried to murder Kurt Westergaard in Denmark.

Someone went to the Oval Office and said, "Mr. President, you have three choices. We can have a standoff with the Somali government, we can negotiate with the pirates, or you can order the Navy SEALs to fire four shots."

I wouldn't like to be a newly elected president and have that dumped on my desk. He must have said, however long it took him, "Use the SEALs."

But that's not what impresses me. The point I'm making is not the one you thought I was going to make. What impresses me is that he didn't give a speech later about it. If Reagan had done that, everyone would remember it. There would be hubris. "They can run, but they can't hide."

I like his nature. Those who need to know, know. We don't have to make a big fucking circus out of it.

MJT: Well, let me ask you this: If you're a terrorist hiding in Afghanistan or wherever, who would you be more afraid of? Bush or Obama? Who do you think would be more likely to get you?

Hitchens: I think it would be a mistake to assume you'd be safer with Obama.

MJT: Obama doesn't exactly look like Mr. Tough Guy to me. He isn't as much of a weenie as some conservatives think he is, but I remember when you said one thing you liked about Bush was you just knew that when he woke up in the morning he asked himself what he could to fight Islamist terrorists today. Obama doesn't do that. You know he doesn't. He really wishes the problem would just go away.

Hitchens: I don't think he wishes that. Did you read the Nobel speech?

MJT: Yes, I was impressed with it.

Hitchens: I thought it was pretty good.

MJT: I thought it was great.

Hitchens: It was very solid and thorough.

MJT: I was surprised he said that to that crowd.

Hitchens: I think he's someone whom it's a mistake to underestimate. I think he wants it to be made clear that he tried everything, that they pushed him to this. That's what we're doing with Iran now. We let them walk over us, spit on us, and laugh at us, but this can't go on forever.

Even with the Major Hasan thing—which I thought was terrible—when he said, "Let's not rush to judgment." That wasn't only itself an awful thing to say. I wish he'd said that about the Cambridge Police Department.

MJT: He did rush to judgment against the Cambridge Police Department, and he made himself look like an ass.

Hitchens: It wasn't a presidential question at all. You know what happened, by the way?

MJT: Of course, although I don't know exactly what you're thinking of at the moment.

Hitchens: Charles Ogletree, a great lawyer in that hood, is a friend of Skip's. And he said, "Don't you worry, I'll call the First Lady." He did, and she got him to say something rather dumb.

He should have said, "I'm the president of the United States, and this isn't even a local event." I'll bet he won't do that again, though. He's learning.

It comes better from someone who has tried everything.

MJT: I agree. It does.

Hitchens: It's not that he wishes it would all go away. He thinks, still, that a lot of international disagreements are not the product of objective reality, but the result of misunderstandings.

MJT: I think it is the result of misunderstanding in a small number of cases. I've talked to lots of Lebanese, for instance, who support Hezbollah because they truly believe Israel is going to attack them no matter what and that Hezbollah is their only defense. They don't understand that Hezbollah is a magnet for Israeli invasions rather than a deterrent. They really don't get it.

Hezbollah's leadership doesn't have this problem, however. They know damn well what they're doing. When they say they're going to "liberate Jerusalem," they know what that means, and it is not based on any misunderstandings.

Hitchens: Look at the Cairo speech where he basically said, "If only we could all get along."

MJT: The Middle East doesn't work that way.

Hitchens: No. Nor does anywhere else.

LaFreniere: Can I ask a question?

MJT: Yeah.

LaFreniere: Right now I'm reading The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk, about British and Russian competition for Iran and Afghanistan. It was recommended to me by the resident diplomat at U.C. Berkeley when I expressed interest in the foreign service.

Hitchens: He also wrote a great book called Like Hidden Fire about the Ottoman Empire staking itself on an alliance with Germany against Britain. They called it the last real holy war to get the Muslims of India to rebel. But they didn't. They didn't just lose the jihad, they lost the war and their empire.

MJT: Did the Ottomans actually call it jihad?

Hitchens: That's what they called it. It was announced in Constantinople by the caliphate that every Muslim in the world must fight against the British Empire. It was one of the biggest historical flops that has ever been. At least when the pope said you had to go on a crusade, he made you. The caliphate said every Muslim must now rise against the British, but they didn't.

We are both too much afraid of these people, and too little. They overstate their strength. At the airports we treat them as though they are everywhere, yet we don't realize what a deadly thing it could be and sometimes is. All the proportions are wrong. They threw Joan Rivers off a plane because her passport didn't look right.

MJT: She was trying to fly from Costa Rica to New Jersey.

Hitchens: "No, ma'am. You can't do it." That's a pity. That was the Costa Ricans doing it.

MJT: It was Continental Airlines staff. It wasn't the TSA, but it was an American company.

LaFreniere: Here's what I wanted to ask: Russia was removed from the scene…

Hitchens: …semi-removed…

LaFreniere: …and there's the possibility that it will come back. It seems the game is played very differently when we have a clear adversary. When the two sides are clearly delineated as they were during the Cold War and the Great Game, the local players don't seem to matter as much. The great powers are playing their game, and the locals are just subjects. Today, now that one of the great powers has been removed, the former subjects are now "the game," so to speak. If Russia gets back in…

Hitchens: Imagine if India had been colonized by the Russians. Call me chauvinistic if you will, but I think India would be better under British rule. That's what Karl Marx said. He said, don't imagine that India will not be colonized. It would be invaded by either Iran, Russia, or Britain.

MJT: Well, you know what Karl Marx thought of Russia.

Hitchens: He hated Russia. He loved America.

MJT: How counterintuitive that is if you don't know it.

Hitchens: Karl Marx's best writing is on America. He said it was the great new country for worker's equality. There was free land for the peasants. It was republican, not monarchical, and it was anti-imperialist. If you look at Henry Adams' memoirs, when his father was at the embassy in London, the Times of London was in favor of the Confederacy. Gladstone helped the Confederacy build a navy. Karl Marx, meanwhile, said Lincoln is our man. The United States is our future. That's not what they teach you in school about Marx.

MJT: That's not what the communists taught their kids, either.

Hitchens: Well, that's true to an extent.

MJT: I mean the schools in the Soviet Union.

Hitchens: For Marxists, Russia was the heart of darkness.

An Interview with Christopher Hitchens, Part I

Fonte: Blog de Michael J. Totten
http://www.michaeltotten.com/2010/01/an-interview-with-christopher-hitchens-part-i.php

I had lunch with journalist and author Christopher Hitchens in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, this week and interviewed him over glasses of Johnny Walker Black Label downtown.

The man should need no introduction, but I'll give him one anyway. He's the author or editor of more than twenty books, a journalist, a literary critic, a world traveler, a teacher, and a polemicist who migrated rightward from the radical left and no longer fits in anyone's convenient box. Last year Forbes magazine cited him as one of the 25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media, but at the same time he's a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford. In 2005, Foreign Policy magazine cited him as one of the 100 most influential intellectuals in the world.

He's a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate, and the Atlantic, and his most recent book, God Is Not Great, made him more famous (or, if you prefer, infamous) than ever. His best book, or perhaps I should say my favorite, is Love, Poverty, and War, a rich collection of travel pieces and essays on those three most important of topics.

Hitchens is certainly famous, and is recognized on the street a lot more often than I am. A tall and slightly disheveled man in his fifties rudely interrupted our conversation outside the bar at one point and said "I can't remember your name, but I recognize you from YouTube."

"You should read more," Hitchens said. He didn't remind the man of his name.

Not two minutes later, an attractive young woman walked up to him, squeezed his arm gently, and said "I love you."

"How often does this happen?" I said.

"This," he said and smiled at the pretty young woman, "doesn't happen nearly enough. But that," he said and gestured to the man who recognized him from YouTube and would not go away, "happens too often."

-

MJT: Ireland has a new anti-blasphemy law.

Hitchens: Yes.

MJT: At the same time, Kurt Westergaard was just attacked in Denmark by a Somali nutcase with an axe for offending Muslims with his Mohammad bomb head cartoon. How is it that supposedly liberal Europeans have come to agree with Islamist fascists that people like Westergaard ought to be punished, even if they think he should be punished less severely?

Hitchens: Let's do a brief thought experiment. I tell you the following: On New Year's Eve, a man in his mid-seventies is having his granddaughter over for a sleep-over, his five-year old granddaughter. He is attacked in his own home by an axe-wielding maniac with homicidal intent. Your mammalian reaction, your reaction as a primate, is one of revulsion. I'm trusting you on this. [Laughs.]

MJT: Oh, yes. You are correct.

Hitchens: Then you pick up yesterday's Guardian, one of the most liberal newspapers in the Western world, and there's a long article that says, ah, that picture, that moral picture, that instinct to protect the old and the young doesn't apply in this case. The man asked for it. He drew a cartoon that upset some people. We aren't at all entitled to use our moral instincts in the correct way.

This is a sort of cultural and moral suicide, in my opinion. It's not exactly comparable to the reaction of the church in Ireland which wants to make it illegal to criticize any religion, which in Ireland doesn't really mean much more than one. Many Irish people I know are already publicly planning to break this law.

There you see, I have to say, a different phenomenon, maybe a different version of the same one, a claim of the right to protection against offense from a church that just lost at least two senior bishops who had to resign not because they had not thoroughly enough made themselves aware of the child abuse?why do we call it abuse? The rape and torture of children?where it seems from the Irish government's report that only a minority of children were not made victims of this hideous iniquitous predation.

The same absurdity is present in both cases. These two religions make very large claims for themselves, that "without us you cannot get to heaven, and without us you will go to hell." They claim the right to high, middle, and low justice over everything from public affairs to private morals. They make these immense claims for themselves and further say they should be immune from criticism. It's not enough to be an absolutist party, but you're not allowed to disagree. This is totalitarianism.

MJT: Here's what I find most astonishing about this. I can understand why certain elements in the Catholic church would want to impose something like this out of self-interest. But why in the hell would a European leftist want something like this imposed to protect somebody else's religion?

Hitchens: I'm fairly sure the Irish left, such as it is, doesn't support this.

MJT: The current president of Ireland said Muslims have the right to be offended by Westergaard's cartoons. I suppose that's true as far as it goes, that everybody has the right to be offended by anything, but why?

Hitchens: Ah yes. This is not new. I've written about this many times. It's reverse ecumenicism. It first became obvious to me when the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989. The reaction of the official newspaper of the Vatican was that the problem wasn't that the foreign leader of a theocratic dictatorship offered money, in public, in his own name, to suborn the murder of the writer of a book of fiction in another country, who wasn't an Iranian citizen. The problem was not that.

You and I may have thought, bloody hell, this is a new kind of threat. But it's an old level of threat. Blasphemy is the problem. That was also the view of the archbishop of Canterbury. The general reaction of the religious establishments to that and to the Danish case?and, by the way, of our secular State Department in the Danish case?was to say the problem was Danish offensiveness. A cartoon in a provincial town in a small Scandinavian democracy obviously should be censored by the government lest it ignite?or as Yale University Press put it, instigate?violence.

Instigation of violence can only mean one thing. I know the English language better than I know anything else.

MJT: Instigate means it's on purpose.

Hitchens: These people are saying the grandfather and granddaughter were the authors of their own attempted assassinations. These are some of the same people who say that if I don't believe in God I can't know what morality is. They've just dissolved morality completely into relativism by saying actually, occasionally, carving up grandfathers and granddaughters with an axe on New Year's Eve can be okay if it's done to protect the reputation of a seventh century Arabian man who heard voices.

MJT: It's hard to psychoanalyze other people, but I sometimes suspect that blaming Salman Rushdie and Kurt Westergaard, as many writers have, for bringing down the wrath of these maniacs from Somalia and Iran, may be a way of convincing themselves they'll be safe as long as they don't cross the same line. Any writer or graphic artist must, at least for a second, think oh fuck, they could come for me if I don't watch out. They can say to themselves they'll be fine if they don't cross that line.

Hitchens: But the line will never stop shifting.

MJT: Of course.

Hitchens: These religious grievances aren't all equivalent. If you'd asked me in the 1930s which religious group was the most dangerous, I'm sure I would have said the Catholic church because of its open allegiance then with?

MJT: ?with Franco.

Hitchens: And Mussolini and the Ustashe. You know the story. With what you might as well call fascism.

There is now no question that if someone I know is under guard for writing something or saying something or drawing something?and I now know a lot of people who have to live their lives surrounded by bodyguards?it's because they've offended what most ignorant people call Islam.

Five kids from a suburb near me in Washington were just arrested because they want to go "fight for Islam" in Afghanistan. Why doesn't that mean they go fight for the Northern Alliance? Or for the rights of the Hazara people? Or for the emancipation of Muslim women? Or for any other number of Islamic causes? To them it can only mean the Taliban.

If we grant that these people are right or that they have a point, we grant that the Taliban does represent Islam. If we grant that the completely contrived protest against Danish cartoons by a few mullahs represents Islamic emotion, how much more contemptuous of Islamic people could we be?

MJT: The Taliban has a six percent approval rating in Afghanistan.

Hitchens: Some British Muslims tried to join Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Mr. Zarqawi's old gang. These are people who blow up mosques.

MJT: Yes.

Hitchens: It's the cultural cringe of the West.

You've been around enough to know that someone who showed the symptoms of Major Hasan in the army of Algeria, or Syria, or Tunisia, or Turkey, would have been in jail long before he could have gunned down his fellow soldiers. These countries know very well from bitter experience that you can't allow zealotry in the army.

We say no, rather than offend Muslims we will allow zealotry in our army. There are those who say people can be made to wear garments that in some Muslim countries are illegal to wear?such as the burkha?because they represent subjection. Some of us think that surely all Muslims do this, but no. What some call our racism or cultural ignorance is, in fact, present in the Western attempt to embrace them.

MJT: You know Mullah Krekar, this fanatic in Norway from Iraqi Kurdistan?

Hitchens: I do know Mullah Krekar.

MJT: The Kurds in Iraq say if he goes home, they'll kill him.

Hitchens: Oh, no question.

MJT: But in Norway he gets state welfare benefits.

Hitchens: Do know anyone in Iraqi Kurdistan who actually prays five times a day?

MJT: No.

Hitchens: And you're not going to, either. They have just as much a claim to being Muslims, Sunni Muslims, as anybody else, yet no jihadist from Birmingham went to help the Kurds when they were being genocided?or Anfalled?by Saddam's atheist state.

The answer to your question is self-hatred, this belief that only true Muslims would want to fight against us.

Did they go to fight in Bosnia?

MJT: Actually a few of them did, some of the so-called Afghan Arabs eventually went to Bosnia.

Hitchens: People like us went to fight in Bosnia.

Did they help in the recovery of Kuwait? No.

Did they help the Northern Alliance resist the Taliban? No.

It has to be, always, the most embittered, the most fanatical, the most absolutist, and the most totalitarian. This is a real poisonous phenomenon, and we refuse to give it its real name because of a combination of ignorance and what I would call multicultural masochism.

If Major Hasan were in the Turkish army, he would not have been offered a promotion after he lectured his fellow medical officers about how "we love death more than they love life." I don't think in Turkey he would have made it.

MJT: Nope. In Turkey he would not have made it.

Hitchens: But he made it in Texas. And nobody wanted to report him because it could have gotten them a black mark on their own dossier for possibly being an intolerant person. This is madness.

The Christian churches have been terrible about this, as have many liberal Jews, by saying we must extend a hand. No, we must not. We must withdraw the hand.

MJT: And yet the other side, the radical Islamist side, hysterically calls us all Crusaders and Zionists.

Hitchens: Here's a way of throwing an Oregon progressive into a state of confusion: ask him or her if they've read the latest Al Qaeda pronouncements on the Hindu question. Or, shall we put it another way, a billion infidels, brown-skinned, third world, living in a secular democracy, and all of them deemed by fatwa as fit only for slaughter.

Who's the racist here? Me for pointing that out?

Remember, this Al Qaeda crap comes not out of Palestine. We've got three big Asian democracies, one Christian?the Philippines?one largely Sufi Indonesia, and one Hindu?India. The attempts of Al Qaeda in each case is to create a separate state, to wrench one out of the territories of these three, which would lead to more chaos and war and misery than you can imagine. The reason I'm an optimist is because if we can manage to create alliances with these three large prosperous multicultural democracies, and say that we understand the attempt by radical Islam?again, I correct myself. I should say reactionary Islam.

I don't like the word radical being used here. I do it myself sometimes, but I'm always trying to stop myself. We say "the radical imam." No, he's not radical. He's the most reactionary bleeder in the region.

MJT: Yes.

Hitchens: By every definition he's extreme, fanatic, fascist.

Underneath this indulgence, Michael, this lenience we inflict on ourselves and others, is a vague feeling among millions in the West that Islam is somehow the religion of millions of the oppressed third world, of the brown-skinned, and of the black-skinned in Somalia and Nigeria. What I call the cultural cringe is involved. It's subliminal, but it's played on by terms like Islamophobia coined by the propaganda of the other side. It's designed to make you feel bad even if you don't like it. It's thought crime. The attempt is to make Islamophobia something you'll be as reluctant to be accused of as being a racist.

Actually, from some people I don't even care if I'm being called a racist. Their standards have become so low that it doesn't hurt like it should.

MJT: Right.

Hitchens: And, by the way, that's a disaster. Racism should be a severe accusation. It should be something you are afraid of.

MJT: It was when I was a child.

Hitchens: Islamophobia is vague and linguistically clumsy. A phobia is an irrational fear. My fear of Islamic terrorism is not irrational. It's quite well-founded.

MJT: It is.

Hitchens: I don't want to be sitting on a plane in Detroit and wondering if some craphound is going to blow me up.

MJT: I spent a week with you last year in Lebanon and you weren't afraid of the Muslims all around us, nor was I.

Hitchens: No.

MJT: Our hotel was on the Muslim side of Beirut.

Hitchens: I went to a Hezbollah rally unmolested. I was treated, in fact, with courtesy. You and I were given a bad time by a fascist group?

MJT: ?of Greek Orthodox?

Hitchens: ?of Orthodox Christians. But I don't think we should try to relativize this too much. If you're going to be killed by a religious fanatic, at least for the rest of our lives, it will be by a Muslim. I asked for it with the Orthodox. I went out of my way to upset them.

MJT: You did. [Laughs.]

Hitchens: You don't have to do that with the Muslims. You can do it without knowing it with the Muslims.

A devoted English school teacher went to teach primary school kids in Sudan, in Khartoum, and the class adopted a bear as a mascot. They asked what they should call it, and the teacher said let's call it Mohammad, it's the most popular name. She was very nearly sentenced to death. Streets full of insane people. She was arrested. The British government had to negotiate for her life. She could not possibly have known that she had to be that careful.

If you can give the name Mohammad to a shitting, screaming, nuisance of a kid?which somebody does 5,000 times a day?then I think you should be able to give it to the class's favorite teddy bear.

The essence of totalitarianism is that it's systematic, thorough, and absolute, but it's also unpredictable and capricious. It keeps everyone off balance. Editors think "let's not run this piece," but they're making a big mistake. They'll come to find an offense that was something they hadn't guessed. They will. That's what happened in Denmark.

MJT: That whole business was largely manufactured. Those cartoons came out months before all the rioting. Rioting in Beirut happened right after rioting in Damascus, and some of the same people were bussed in at each riot.

Hitchens: On the same busses.

MJT: On the same busses. And who do you supposed paid the drivers?

Hitchens: The Muslim world had bigger things on its mind than the small town press in Denmark.

MJT: Of course.

Hitchens: But a very sinister thing happened that I want to draw your attention to, as well. During the Rushdie affair, the embassies of several Muslim countries began to come to the British foreign office and say, about Rushdie, "isn't there something you can do to stop this guy?" The embassy of Qatar was one, and the embassy of Saudi Arabia was another. As if the embassies in London were there to represent a religion rather than a state or a people. That was an early warning.

Egypt may be a Muslim-majority country, but the Egyptian ambassador represents, has to represent, at least ten million Coptic Christians.

MJT: Theoretically.

Hitchens: And many unbelievers.

Then these embassies ganged up on the prime minister of Denmark and said "we insist that you get into the habit of censoring your own country's newspapers like we do." This was the same delegation. It's very dangerous.

And our own State Department said the Danes should apologize. The State Department did not say "We take a solidarity position with a small democratic Scandinavian country that's a fellow member of NATO, a long-standing ally, whose troops are helping the Muslims of Afghanistan emancipate themselves from the Taliban." That's the kind of thing the State Department is supposed to say, pronouncements on that kind of thing. Instead, it pronounced on what it's not supposed to pronounce on, another country's cartoons. Karen Hughes, I think, was responsible for that. This was the Bush Administration saying this. This was a full-scale capitulation. It has to be stopped.

To be continued...

Voicing our disbelief

Russell Blackford

Fonte: The Philosophers' Magazine, Edição 48
http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=962
Russell Blackford is co-editor, with Udo Schüklenk, of the recently-published 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell).
Russell Blackford stands up for the new atheism
In recent years, we have witnessed a flood of books, aimed at the popular market, issuing robust challenges to theistic religious belief. A rather puzzling expression, “the New Atheism”, has been applied to this body of work, particularly the contributions of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. They, in turn, are sometimes referred to, apparently with affection, as “The Four Horsemen”.

The most prominent books in this New Atheist flood are, perhaps, Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Hitchens’ God is Not Great. But then there are The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, both by Harris; The Atheist Manifesto, by Michel Onfray; Breaking the Spell by Dennett; Against All Gods, by AC Grayling; Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; and God: The Failed Hypothesis, by Victor J. Stenger. The list continues, and the titles show that the authors mean business.
Why, however, do we need this “New Atheism”, and what’s so new about it? There’s a sense in which nothing is very new here, and a great deal of journalistic hype is involved. But there’s something to the idea, all the same. Here’s the deal.
Religious teachings promise us much. They offer a deeper understanding of reality, more meaningful lives and morally superior conduct, and such extraordinary (if illusory) benefits as rightness with a Supreme Being, liberation from earthly attachments, or a blissful form of personal immortality. It all sounds good, and if some of these teachings are rationally warranted it would be well to discover which. At the same time, however, religious teachings can be onerous in their demands; if they can’t deliver on what they promise, it would be well to know that. I take it, then, that there is an overwhelming case for rational examination of religious teachings. Even if reason can take us only so far, we ought to explore just how far.
But it might appear that scrutiny of religion’s claims is not an urgent task, at least not if the scrutiny is conducted in public, and especially not in modern, apparently secular, Western democracies. Hasn’t religiosity become rather unobtrusive since the bad old days when heretics were burned? So why is there any need to engage in strong, publicly prominent criticism of religious teachings, the organisations that promote them, or the leaders of those organisations? Perhaps rational critiques of religion should be available somewhere – maybe in peer-reviewed philosophy journals – but no great effort should be made to debunk religion in popular books, magazine or newspaper articles, media appearances, and so on. Or so it might be argued. In that case, it might be said, the New Atheism is unnecessary, and perhaps even undesirable. Why offend people, why stir up distrust and division, as the Four Horsemen seem to do?
I disagree. In the 1970s, or even the 1990s, it was possible to think religion had been declawed, and that further challenges to religious philosophies, institutions, and leaders were unnecessary. On this view, all the hard work had been done, and religion was withering away after the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, Darwin, and the social iconoclasm of the 1960s. Against that background, it became taboo to criticise religion in the public sphere; it was widely assumed that religion was retreating, in any event, and didn’t need to be fought anymore. Attacks on people’s “deeply-held beliefs” even smacked a little of cultural imperialism.
In the academy, bright minds in philosophy turned to other topics. Bright young atheists and sceptics were certainly not steered into philosophy of religion, which looked like an intellectual dead end.
But the situation now looks very different, even in the supposedly enlightened nations of the West. For a start, a revived Christian philosophy is well entrenched within Anglo-American philosophy of religion. More importantly, perhaps, religious organisations and leaders continue to exert social power. All too often, they seek to control how we plan and run our lives, including choices about how we die. At various times, religious lobbies have opposed a vast range of beneficial, or at least essentially harmless, activities and innovations. Even now, one religion or another opposes abortion rights; most contraceptive technologies; stem-cell and therapeutic cloning research; physician-assisted suicide; and a wide range of sexual conduct involving consenting adults. We still see intense activism from the religious lobbies of all Western democracies, and even in relatively secular countries, such as the UK and Australia, governments pander blatantly to Christian moral concerns.
The situation is far worse in the US, where religious conservatives regrouped with dramatic success during the 1970s and 1980s, establishing well-financed networks, think tanks, and even their own so-called universities. Slick attempts are made to undermine public trust in science where it contradicts the literal Genesis narrative; a rampant dominionist movement wants to establish an American theocracy; the recent Bush administration took the country some considerable way down that path; and the election of a relatively liberal president has produced hysteria on the religious right (polling shows that many American conservatives now believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist). American religiosity is real, and there is nothing subtle or liberal-minded about its most popular forms.
Meanwhile, we are confronted every day by the horrors of political Islam, with its ambitions to extend sharia law universally and its ugly violations of human rights wherever it actually has power. Many critics of religion were radicalised by the traumatic events of 9/11 when thousands of people were murdered by terrorists. Islam doubtless has moderate and even liberal manifestations, but prominent, politicised forms of Islam take a hard line against secularism, modernity, and all forms of liberal thought.
In a different world, we might be content to argue that the church (and the mosque, and all the other religious architecture that sprouts across the landscape) should be separate from the state, and that discussions about public policy should rely on secular principles such as the Millian harm principle. More radical attacks on religion’s truth-claims and moral authority would be less urgent if the various sects agreed, without equivocation, to a wall of separation between themselves and the state. Unfortunately, however, they often have good reasons (by their own lights) to oppose such strict secularism. Many religious sects, including many mainstream Christian denominations, do not distinguish sharply between guidance on individual salvation and the exercise of political power. They may be sceptical about the independence of secular goals from religious ones, or about the distinction between personal goals and those of the state. Some groups do not accept the reality of continuing social pluralism. Instead, they look to a time when their (allegedly) righteous views will prevail.
When religion claims authority in the political sphere, it is unsurprising – and totally justifiable – that atheists and sceptics question the source of this authority. If religious organisations or their leaders claim to speak on behalf of a god, it is fair to ask whether the god concerned really makes the claims that are communicated on its behalf. Does this god even exist? Where is the evidence? And even if this being does exist, why, exactly, should its wishes be translated into socially-accepted moral norms, let alone into laws enforced by the state’s coercive power? When these questions are asked publicly, even with a degree of aggression, that’s an entirely healthy thing.
Atheists and sceptics should, no doubt, defend secularism. But if we are realistic, we will understand that the idea of secularism has little traction in societies where the authority of religion is considered legitimate and taken for granted. For many religious groups, moreover, secularism is not an attractive ideal. Advocating secularism and directly challenging the authority of religion should not be viewed as two alternative strategies for atheists and sceptics who wish to resist the political influence of religion. Rather, these strategies are mutually supportive and ought to be pursued in tandem. That is the lesson that we need to learn.
In short, there is plenty of reason to challenge religions and contest their doctrinal claims, not just as an academic exercise, but as a matter of real urgency. Atheists and sceptics should deny the authority of religious organisations and leaders to pronounce on matters of ultimate truth and correct morality. This will require persistent, cool argument, but also moments of outright denunciation or even unashamed mockery of religion’s most absurd actions and truth-claims.
We should never flinch from expressing the view that no religion has any rational warrant – that these Emperors really have no clothes – and that many churches and sects promote cruelty, misery, ignorance, and human rights abuses. Yes, there are liberal forms of religion, but whatever good will we might feel towards them should not make us hesitate to speak uncomfortable truths. In particular, we ought to insist that religious leaders are not our moral leaders, despite their affectations.
To a large extent, the New Atheism is merely the restoration of normal transmission. Earlier this decade, some philosophers, public intellectuals, and high-profile scientists, decided, for a mix of reasons, that enough was enough and it was time to break the taboo against explicit and popular criticism of religion. They were, in fact, not the only ones who felt that way: even before most of the New Atheist books appeared, I was starting to hear rumblings. People around me were beginning to say that it was necessary to re-engage in the public sphere with religion’s truth-claims. Nonetheless, Dawkins and the other Horsemen opened up a publishing market and sparked an important debate. Thereby, they performed a public service.
The current debate about the truth-claims, moral authority, and social value of religion is very timely. It reflects the cold fact that the struggle of ideas is far from over, and that this is, after all, a good time to subject religions and all their claims to sceptical scrutiny. Those of us who do not believe have more than enough reason to dispute the unwarranted prestige enjoyed by the many variations of orthodox Abrahamic theism (and, indeed, all other religious systems). The time has come, once again, when critiques of theistic religion must be put strongly, clearly, openly, and unremittingly. What’s new about the New Atheism is its restoration of some balance – that, and the sheer number of people who have come to the same realisation.
Of course, there has been a backlash, and not just from the pious. Terry Eagleton, for example, has sharpened his literary talons to attack the New Atheists – particularly Dawkins and Hitchens – in Reason, Faith, and Revolution. Throughout 2009, much of the blogosphere has been dominated by an acrimonious row about something that evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne calls “accommodationism”. This involves two ideas: first, that supposedly “moderate” kinds of religion (including Roman Catholicism) are compatible with science; and, second, that it is unseemly and ill-advised for science-minded people to criticise “moderate” religion even in a thoughtful and civil way.
Although I am not hostile to all religious people, no matter how theologically and politically liberal, I stand alongside Coyne in rejecting accommodationism. It is, I think, clear, that only the most non-literalist kinds of theology – together with rarefied views such as eighteenth-century-style deism – are philosophically compatible with the picture of the universe and ourselves that we see emerging from science. As it appears to me, the scientific picture is incompatible not only with fundamentalisms of various kinds but also with many supposedly “moderate” views that continue to postulate a loving, providential creator. When we challenge those views, we do not attack a straw man. We are challenging mainstream Abrahamic understandings whose adherents continue to seek power and influence.
It doesn’t help when opponents of the New Atheism attempt a silly and unfair tu quoque! riposte – or perhaps just try to wound feelings, express spite, or incite anger – by branding forthright critics of religion as “fundamentalist atheists”. This expression should be contested vigorously whenever it appears. A fundamentalist atheist would be one who believes in the inerrancy of an atheist text – perhaps one of the New Atheist books, such as The God Delusion – even in the face of results from rational inquiry. However, I have yet to encounter such a person, and in any event such a label has nothing to do with the writings of Dawkins, Hitchens and the other Horsemen. Let’s be clear that the word “fundamentalist” does not mean “forthright” or “outspoken”. To use the word so loosely involves overlooking what is wrong with fundamentalism in the first place, namely its dogmatic resistance to all the findings of science and reason (as when Young Earth Creationists insist, against all the evidence, that the Earth is only six to ten thousand years old).
None of this is to deny that some atheists show apocalyptic or authoritarian tendencies. They may wish to eradicate religion in a dramatic way within their own lifetimes, rather than merely contesting religious truth-claims (with more realistic goals in mind). Some may even be tempted to advocate state action in an attempt to impose non-belief. Unfortunately, all social movements attract people with these tendencies, and even very liberal-minded individuals should beware the siren calls to apocalyptic and authoritarian thinking. Exasperation can make such thinking seem attractive. For that reason, atheists should engage in a degree of mutual scrutiny (and, indeed, self-scrutiny!), as well as in scrutiny of religious claims.
Still, much of the adverse reaction to the New Atheism – much of the distaste, bemusement, and discomfort expressed even by many atheists – is ill-founded. It displays a foolish sentimentalisation of religious faith, and often a failure to appreciate the real-world problem of religion’s persistence. Critics of forthright atheism display a naivety about religion’s ongoing power and influence in the public sphere, all too obvious even in Western democracies.
There are now many people who do not believe in any God or gods, or in the truth of any religious dogmas involving supernatural entities and forces, and are prepared to say so in public. Many of them have interesting reasons for their views, and it’s valuable for all of them – for all of us – to speak up. It doesn’t even matter if we don’t all entirely agree in our thinking; in fact, the last thing we should want is the hardening of contemporary forthright atheism into a kind of quasi-religious sect with its own body of orthodox dogma. We should go on scrutinising religion from all angles, while discussing our own differences thoughtfully, carefully, and often.
In all, this is a good time for atheists and sceptics to stand up and start debating. There’s no time like now to voice our disbelief.