The Price of Honor

Yet another gruesome death in what is called "the Muslim World". A world with which America is supposed to share "common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings"! One of those shared, common, principles of justice says a woman who "strayed outside of the line" [sometimes known as adultery] must pay a price, a price that is not anything less than her life. I am talking about stoning her to death, of course.

A woman who had "strayed outside of the line" in the eyes of their non-existent allah, was stoned alive by the Taliban in Pakistan. Stoned until her writhing body finally gave up and ceased to move. By men who gave her hell on earth. Was it to provide another statistic to confirm the lie that their allah would take care of those who disobeyed his commands? Or was it their mistrust in their "compassionate and merciful" allah, who might, in a moment of weakness, forgive and forget the woman?

Oh, let the people of the Muslim World find their balance between liberty and license, will you?

And, then comes this pathetic attempt to justify "justice":

Gayle Lemmon [Council of Foreign Relations] I think this is what happens when you have Taliban controlled areas, right? I mean, I think women face punishments such as stoning, slashing, beating, [unintelligible], without a trial, without ever getting a say. That's their version of justice.

...

Brian Ross [ABC News]: And, why is that approach? [unintelligible] our viewers why the Taliban treats women this way?

Lemmon: I don't think the Taliban universally treats women this way, but this is their version of the law. They have a view of the ideal times of Islamic [unintelligible]. Their version of the 7th century at the time of Islam's founding. And, they think this is what happens to women, you know, as carriers of honor. Anytime they stray outside of the line they must face severe punishment, slashings, beatings, stonings. And, that's their version of justice. And, men face the same kind of very tough justice from the Taliban.

Ross: As carriers of honor, though, women are in a sense held in higher regard and pay a price for it.

Lemmon: That's right. That's right. It' quite positive in the sense that women are viewed and respected as carriers of family honor, but it also means that they can pay the price for men's crimes. They can pay the price for being seen, without any kind of proof, as straying outside of the line.

Ross: And, in this case there is no evidence that the man she was seen with was similarly punished.

Lemmon: That's right... it happens, you know. Sometime the man is punished and sometime he isn't. And, in every case the woman is punished.

Excuse me, I've got to run to the toilet!

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Enduring Beliefs

Okay, finally the waves made by a visit to a local mosque in May of this year by a bunch of Wellesley Middle School children have hit the shores of Boston:

The usual suspects are riding the waves. Dennis Hale, a director of Americans for Peace and Tolerance which released the video, said:

"If a Catholic priest took school kids to a church and said, 'Let's teach them about Catholicism,' and the kids kneeled before the altar, took wine, and the Host, the furor would be visible from outer space".

Bilal Kaleem, president of the Muslim American Society of Boston, which manages and runs the cultural center, retorted:

"They make it their business to go after mosques," Kaleem said. "They've never come to the center, never agreed to meet and talk about their concern."

There is probably an element of truth in both the statements. I don't care which religion is corrupting the young minds of Wellesley, but I do care that the Wellesley Middle School is, at the very least, an accomplice in this corruption. Four field trips — to a mosque, a synagogue, a gospel musical performance, and a meeting with Hindu religious representatives — all in a single course. That's one heck of a lot of mental abuse heaped on a child, with more than a little help from the school officials and willing parents!

The superintendent of the school district, Bella Wong, has defended the trips as a part of their sixth-grade social studies course, "Enduring Beliefs in the World Today". I have several questions for Ms. Wong about the "Enduring Beliefs" that the teacher had selected for the class, as well as about what happened in the classroom between and after the field trips.

After all that gospel music praising their god as compassionate, merciful, and loving, did the teacher tell them about the belief that their loving god could turn wrathful if his commands were not obeyed, however unreasonable and hateful they might be? Otherwise, they would not have understood why gays and lesbians are singled out as the target of Christian fury:

In 1987, Daniel Wan was beaten up outside of a bar in Broward County, Fla., by assailants who called him faggot, repeatedly kicking him and throwing him up against a moving car. He died from his injuries two days later.

At a pre-trial hearing, Circuit Judge Daniel Futch jokingly asked the prosecuting attorney, "That's a crime now, to beat up a homosexual?" The prosecutor responded, "Yes, sir. And it's a crime to kill them." To that, the judge quipped, "Times really have changed." Although the judge apologized and maintained he was kidding, he was removed from the case.

The students should then be referred to the report that there was a 11 per cent rise in homophobic hate crime (1706 gay victims in all) across America in 2009, as evidence for the enduring belief that homosexuality is unnatural, despite every bit of scientific evidence to the contrary.

When they met with the representatives of Hinduism, did the teachers ask them to explain to the children the enduring belief in their religion, that their gods created one man as inferior and a slave to another? They could illustrate this belief with the story of the "Nayadiyar", a community in the region of Southern India where I was born. The name literally meant in Tamil, the local language, "those who killed and disposed off stray dogs". For this service the rest of the village gave them food. The Nayadiyars were not only "untouchable" and but must also remain "unseen" by other "upper caste" communities in the village. They'd hide behind the bushes at night and howl like dogs, begging for food. "Compassionate" villagers would then throw the leftovers from their dinner into the bushes, for the Nayadiars to pick up and eat.

Should this be dismissed as a thing of the past, perhaps, the Hindu representatives could explain why the belief that couples who'd love and marry across caste lines deserved to be lynched, was still enduring in many Indian towns and villages.

Before their field trip to the mosque, did the teacher explain to her students why the mosque was a "safe environment", especially for the girls who would be asked to stand behind in a corner of the room, unseen by their male friends during the prayer? Perhaps, she could have arranged for them a special screening of the film, "The Stoning of Soraya M." for adultery. And then the teacher could also tell them about the punishment of 99 lashes for Sakineh M. Ashtiani, for showing "her face" to strangers in a photograph that was not hers, before being put to death for a murder that she did not commit.

That should educate the girls about the enduring belief in Islam that a woman was a deceitful and lascivious creature prone to sexual excesses, and must always be caged.

After all the field trips and all the learning about these enduring beliefs, will there be at least one class on facts, just so the students take away the lesson that beliefs, however enduring they may be, are not necessarily facts? Will the teacher let them know of the fact that belief in these fictitious gods is a delusion, and if enduring, can be harmful to their mental health?

If the teacher is unable or unwilling to educate the children about this fact, I suggest she invite Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Richard Dawkins, or Sam Harris, and they will be glad to oblige. In the unlikely event that they don't, she can always invite me.

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Ahead of the Blasphemy Day

It's kind of lame to come up with similarities between business and religion, because religion is business. Almost. With my limited understanding of religion, and even more limited understanding of business, I have come up with a few subtle differences between business inside and outside of the church. Here are the top ten:

10 Corruption

Buy the Lords to curry favors

Sell the Lord to curry favors

9 Competition

Pretend war, practice peace

Pretend peace, practice war

8 Leisure

Work six days a week, rest on the seventh, may be

Rest six days a week, work on the seventh, may be

7 Sex

Man defrocks the madame

Madame defrocks the monsignor

6 Motto

We profit from life before death

We profit from life after death

5 Extortion

Pay now or we'll give you hell

Pay now and we'll give you heaven

4 Ad

There ain't no goods like our goods

There ain't no god like our god

3 Sale

Buy now, pay later

Pay now, buy later

2 Lust

All eyes on the bottom line

All eyes on the bottom, loin

1 Lesson

There's no such thing as free lunch

There's no such thing as free sex

---

International Blasphemy Rights Day is September 30th!

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Idea and Violence

The insistence, if only implicitly, on a choiceless singularity of human identity not only diminishes us all, it also makes the world much more flammable. The alternative to the divisiveness of one pre-eminent categorization is not any unreal claim that we are all much the same. Rather, the main hope of harmony in our troubled world lies in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and work against sharp divisions around one single hardened line of vehement division that allegedly cannot be resisted. Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when our differences are narrowed into one devised system of uniquely powerful categorization.

--- Amartya Sen. What Clash of Civilizations? Why religious identity isn't destiny. Slate, March 29, 2006.

This message from Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is at once serious, wrong, and dangerous. It is serious because the messenger is an acclaimed scholar, well regarded by thinkers and policy makers alike, and known to choose his words carefully. It is wrong because Sen's admonition derives from an ill-defined and vacuous concept of identity. It is dangerous because the message is an implicit appeal to desist from identifying and subjecting to criticism, the adherents to a religion that is fundamentally antithetical to the ideals of liberty, one law for all, and secularism. Witness how the media and the polity religiously avoid the use of the words "Muslim" and "Islam" in any context which may be seen as even remotely critical of these artifacts.

Several years ago, I visited a village in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, on behalf of a business group in Chennai. The group's owners hailed from this village, and wanted to distribute a large tract of fallow land in their possession to the landless laborers of the village. I was sent to assess the feasibility of the project and develop a mechanism for the distribution.

When I arrived in the village, the landowners wanted to meet me separately to express their views on the matter, and I obliged. In the meeting, they made clear their strong reservations about distributing land to the landless laborers in the village. Quite clearly, it was in their interest to do so, but I pressed them anyway for the reasons for their objection. Their contention was that the landless laborers belonged to the Valaiyar community which was a denotified tribe, and therefore were criminals who could not be trusted. I didn't understand why the Valaiyars were identified as a denotified tribe, or the connection between that identity and the alleged criminality of the members.

After I got back to Chennai, I did a little bit of research into the matter. In the colonial days, the British had identified several communities in the then Madras Province (and elsewhere, I am sure) — the Valaiyars among them — as thugs, and issued a gazette (official) notification to that effect. All the affected communities were collectively known as "Notified Tribes", an ignominious identity, signifying criminal habits.

After independence, the Government of India decided to rectify this unfair stereotyping of entire communities. It issued a new gazette notification, declaring that the said communities have been denotified as criminal tribes. Thereafter, they were identified as "Denotified Tribes". Their identity was officially changed but they were stuck with the ignominy nonetheless. So much for the concept of identity!

Lest you should dismiss this as an unrelated and frivolous anecdote, consider this. Professor Sen notes in a essay on "Secularism and Discontent" from his book, The Argumentative Indian, that "...India has, at this time, a Muslim President, a Sikh Prime Minister and a Christian head of the ruling party" [ibid. fn, p.302]. Sen proudly identifies Dr. Abdul Kalam, then President of India, as a Muslim. Yet, late Dr. Rafiq Zakaria, a well regarded Islamic scholar and former Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, someone whom Sen respected enough to write a forward to his book, "Communal Rage in Secular India", would not recognize Dr. Kalam as a Muslim! In an article that originally appeared in the Asian Age and hastily withdrawn, Dr. Zakaria wrote,

...But because [Dr. Kalam] was born a Muslim and bears a Muslim name, he should not be put in the same category as the two former Muslim Presidents, Dr Zakir Husain and Mr Fakruddin Ali Ahmed. Both of them were as great a patriot and Indian to the core as Dr Kalam. But they were also Muslims in the real sense of the word; they believed in the tenets of the Quran and faithfully followed the traditions of the Prophet...But for God's sake, don't describe [Dr. Kalam] as a Muslim President and take credit for having obliged the Muslims for giving them this great honour.

Dr. Zakaria then goes through a litany of reasons why Dr. Kalam should not be considered a Muslim. Amongst them are his refusal of an invitation to visit the Anjuman-i-Islam "to deliver the famous Seerut lecture to pay homage to the Prophet", his enchantment with Gita, and an anecdote that he was a vegetarian! I don't care if Dr. Kalam was or was not a Muslim "in the real sense of the word", whatever that means, but it is less than satisfying to note that two eminent scholars such as Dr. Sen and Dr. Zakaria could not agree on an identity seemingly as simple as that of a Muslim.

Without clearly defining identity, Sen sets up a couple of strawmen to shoot down. First, Sen questions "the presumption that we must have a single identity - at least a principal and dominant" [ibid. p.350]. I have no such presumption. It's quite obvious to me, and I am reasonably certain, to millions of my fellow bloggers, that we have at least two identities — that of a blogger and that of a son or a daughter! Yet, Sen belabors the existence of multiple identities in presentation after presentation, by tirelessly gushing through a list of identities that a person may have —

The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theatre lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician, and someone who is deeply committed to the view that there are intelligent beings in outer space with whom it is extremely urgent to talk (preferably in English).

--- Amartya Sen. Identity and Violence, 2006.

Well, of course, but each one of these identities can be refined into several finer identities — for example, a vegetarian can be a lacto-vegetarian, a vegan, or a fruitarian, or aggregated into coarser identities — for example, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew can be aggregated into an Abrahamic, a monotheist, and a theist. What we end up with is a selection from a hierarchy of innumerable identities.

Although we may have multiple identities, most are irrelevant in a given context. As Sen himself concedes [ibid. p.350],

...the priorities over these [multiple] identities must be relative to the issue at hand (for example,the vegetarian identity may be more important when going to dinner rather than to to a Consulate, whereas the French citizenship may be more telling when going to a Consulate rather than attending a dinner.

Omar Sheikh is an alumnus of the London School of Economics, a chess buff, a cricket fan, and also a male (alphabetically ordered list to be super pc), but none of these identities has any relevance to the fact that he had masterminded the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl. That Mr. Sheikh was a devout Muslim, however, was relevant to Mr. Pearl's murder. Why?

Before I answer the question, let's take a closer look at Sen's second strawman. After questioning the presumption of a singular identity, Sen proceeds to challenge "the supposition that we "discover" our identity, with no room for any choice" [ibid., p.350]. I agree that we don't "discover" our identities by some mysterious, metaphysical process. However, we don't "choose" our identities either.

What we choose are ideas — our ideals, values, and theories. The range of ideas, values, and theories that we choose from is infinite. An American national identity masks variations in one's adherence to the constitutional provisions of the United States. The California physician and atheist, Michael Newdow, who sued against the reference to god in the pledge of alliance, is very much an American when it comes to the rest of the pledge.

To make matters worse, our behavior is not only the product of the ideas that we choose to subscribe to, but also how passionate we are about them. The suicide bomber who decides to destroy not only the unbelievers' lives but also his own, is far more deeply and dangerously committed to his beliefs than someone who may share those beliefs, but also respect the lives of others with different beliefs.

Identity is a statistical fiction, an artifact of data reduction and clustering. It masks the underlying variability and complexity of the ideas held by an individual. The devil, as they say, is in the details. In analyzing the causes of violence, it's the ideas that we need to focus on.

It is not because the likes of Omar Sheikh are identified as Muslims that they kill the likes of Daniel Pearl. It is because of the higher propensity of Muslims to commit violence, when confronted by any situation that they perceive as inimical to their ideas, that the likes of Omar Sheikh are identified as Muslims. As Abdel Rahman al-Rashed wrote in this article that first appeared in the London-based pan-Arabic newspaper, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims". Why does a Muslim have a higher propensity to commit terrorism? What does religion have anything to do with this, if at all?

A religion is a collection of ideas, in some instances written down in scriptures eons ago, and in others, communicated orally across generations. Some ideas in this collection can be dangerous, and if left unchallenged or glossed over, will make "the world much more flammable" to use Sen's own words. The idea of untouchability, the idea that woman is a temptress and inferior to man, and the idea that homosexuality is a mortal sin that is punishable by death, are not benign private beliefs. Nor is the idea that apostates, blasphemers, and unbelievers can, and should be, put to death and their property confiscated or destroyed.

In the interest of human civilization and progress, ideas must be subjected to logical and empirical scrutiny. They must be challenged and rejected when warranted. Deeming an idea as above criticism and rejection because it's a god's last word, communicated through his last and only true prophet, is a dangerous idea in itself, no matter how many billions of people buy into the lie. With an incredible number of blind-reviewed publications to his credit, Professor Sen should know!

Liberals and secularists who obfuscate inherently dangerous ideas by characterizing them as misinterpretations of religion, or seek justification for the actions that follow from such ideas elsewhere — as Sen does in what he calls the "solitarist approach" to identity — are simply dishonest. Intellectual honesty demands that they should explicitly and unequivocally reject those ideas and throw them into "the ash heap of history", to use President Reagan's words.

It's undoubtably wrong if Michael Enright had confused a singular identity of Ahmed Sharif as a Muslim with the ideas and beliefs held by other Muslims he might have encountered in Afghanistan, and then proceeded to assault him. It is equally wrong, however, to conflate a criticism of irrational and deadly ideas into a criticism of an identity, and then brand it as divisive or hateful. Such attempts risk the eventual domination and entrenchment of those ideas that can be dislodged only at an enormous cost, both to human lives and property. If you have any doubt, read the history of the Holocaust and the Second World War.

---

¹This article is essentially same as the one that I wrote four years ago, "Much Ado About Identity". It's worth a reread, I think, in the current climate of heightened sensitivity to criticism of religion.

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Holy Smokes!

Alex Stewart is a citizen of Australia, a liberal democracy, I think. The people of Australia, including Mr. Stewart, just elected their government that has been sworn in to protect their constitutionally guaranteed rights. I hope that the elected representatives of the people of Australia take their oath of office seriously.

As an atheist, Mr. Stewart wanted to demonstrate that the Bible and the Koran are just "f---ing" books. So, he tore up a page or two from these books, rolled some grass clippings into them, and lighted them as he would cigarettes. Adding a touch of humor to the event, "he gave the Bible a seven out of 10 for its burning qualities, and said it was better than the Koran which left him feeling sick."

I burn my old newspapers, magazines, and pulp fiction routinely to kindle a fire in my fireplace. If I owned a copy of Bible, Das Kapital, Koran, Mein Kampf, Origin of Species, Ramayana, or whatever that is moth-eaten, figuratively, or literally, I have every right to throw them in there, too.

If I wanted to take a video of this trash burning in the fireplace with me shouting "Holy Smokes!", and publish it any media that agrees to publish it, that's my right, too.

To those who are offended by my action or the video, I say, "You have every right to be offended. You can "give your tonsils as a good an airing as you would like" without violating the local laws on noise pollution. You may republish my video, edit it, clip it, and add critical comments, within the terms of the license that I grant to you. You can call me a nitwit, a sociopath, a f#$*ing idiot, or whatever name you like, in any space, virtual or real, to which you have the relevant rights. And, I reserve the right to reject your criticisms and name calling.

Like Mr. Stewart, I presume that I am living in a liberal democracy, too, and not in a theocracy. We have every right here to engage in a war of words over ideas, good or bad. If I had done nothing illegal, and I am physically assaulted by mindless minions, it's the bloody responsibility of the State to protect me and punish the criminals. I pay taxes for that, not for pandering to the idiots, who, at the slightest provocation, wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice the living in the altar of the dead.

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