suburbanmusings

Christians: a few questions. Why did God create the universe in a billionth of a second and then wait eight billion years to create the earth? After creating the earth why did he wait a further four and a half billion years before creating Adam and Eve? Why did God create Neanderthals and then get rid of them? Why did God create mosquitoes and malaria? If God is omnipotent then why did He bother to create the laws governing the universe – why not just click his fingers? Why were we told that we couldn’t and then that we could eat pork? If Jesus helped the outcasts of society why does the Church discriminate against gays? If it is so hard for rich men to enter heaven why does the Archbishop of Canterbury get paid seventy grand a year? Why did God smite Sodom and Gomorra but bless Benidorm with endless sunshine? What was the point of the dinosaurs? Why do you believe that the Bible is the word of God but the Koran isn’t? Is the universe just a big Hornby set for God to play with and how egotistical is that? If God is perfect how is it possible for Him to feel wrath, surely that’s a sign of fallibility and a sin? Is it possible to disagree with God about sex before marriage? Why would the devil torture evil people when he’s evil himself? Why are certain people saved by miracles but millions allowed to die in genocides? If abortion is immoral then why does God cause miscarriages? Why do we need a church or a priest to allow us to live as a Christian? You say the universe is perfect because it was designed by God but galaxies collide, stars explode, species die out, and people are born with disabilities, discuss.

As you may have guessed I don’t believe that God exists despite spending twelve years at Catholic school. Perhaps they educated me a bit too well, though I did pass GCSE Religious Studies so if I’m wrong at least it shows that God has a sense of humour.

Now I haven’t read the recent diatribes against religion by messers Dawkins and Hitchens but I like to think that what I just said sums up the case for atheism without needing to waffle on for the next four hundred pages. I also happen to slightly disagree with their argument that religion is universally bad and that people should be encouraged to convert to atheism. Dawkins himself seemed to backtrack a little when he described himself as “Culturally Christian.” Nor do I believe that religion has been the cause of nearly all wars; surely that has been greed and the quest for power and resources. Incidentally though, Hitler was not an atheist and did at one point claim to be doing “God’s work”. Certainly the Nazis were aided and abetted by the leadership of the Catholic Church

Christianity like Confucianism or the work of Proust is essentially a philosophy to help one through life and ít provides spiritual comfort for millions across the world. Few other philosophies help so many humans through the uncertainty, the hardship and the grief that life can bring. Although I am an atheist I do feel that a critical exposure to religion can help foster a sense of moral duty in life. Many of Jesus’ parables speak of the need to help others and the importance of holding values throughout one's life. And it’s not just Christianity that has merit. The story of the Buddha is a fascinating tale of the need for spiritual well-being and meditation. It is also easy to understand the appeal of Islam, especially in agrarian societies. Mohammed preached the importance of an ascetic life and the equality and humbleness of Islam is appealing to people who may have few possessions and no political rights. If Christopher Hitchens had been brought up in Soweto or Rio de Janeiro with a life-expectancy in the low-thirties and friends dying all around I suspect that he, like I, would be in the front row of church every Sunday. Indeed for the eighteen hundred years leading up to the industrial revolution Christianity provided a lifeline from the grinding hardship of daily life. Today capitalism and democracy bring freedom and prosperity but neither can guarantee happiness. Furthermore it is impossible to tell people what they may and may not believe without becoming totalitarian.

If everybody subscribed to the liberal ideal of following their own God in the privacy of their own house then we wouldn’t have a problem. The trouble with the religious is that they usually believe their own hype. The established Church in England likes to cast its votes in the House of Lords and fights tooth and nail to have its say in virtually everything. Whether it is our sexuality, the way we spend a Sunday, our choice of school or what we like to watch at the cinema the Church likes to tell us what to do, sometimes successfully. This is the true danger of religion.

In the West we are fortunate that Christianity has been forced into a rearguard action. It started with Copernicus and then Galileo casting doubt on aspects of the Church’s teaching. At first this was easily solved with a bit of summary imprisonment but with the Reformation and the Enlightenment the power of critical thought eventually triumphed over religious dogma. The rise in living standards and the arrival of political freedom in Europe meant the masses suddenly weren’t so downtrodden and the Church lost its key target audience. Countries like France and the U.S.A. managed to formally abolish the link between church and state while Britain has muddled on through. Which brings us back to the present; the Church is on the ropes in Europe and if people choose to believe today then it is their free choice and I respect that. If we can find a politician brave enough then we might even be able to break the link between the church and state in our own country and religion will truly be a private affair.

The Enlightenment was, I’m afraid to say, a fairly European affair and virtually every cultural, technological, scientific and philosophical breakthrough of the last five hundred years has been made in the West. In Northern Europe polls often indicate that around 50% of the population are agnostic or atheist. In parts of the Middle East it would be difficult to openly conduct that poll. At one point the Middle East was wealthier and more advanced than Europe but there is evidence that the lack of an Islamic Enlightenment allowed Europe to leap ahead. By the 13th century the creative output of the Islamic World had stagnated and the Mongol invasions devastated the centres of learning. Critical thought does not seem to have re-developed since that period and the Arab World currently translates fewer books each year than Spain has in the last one thousand years. This may be due to the literalist and all-encompassing nature of Islam. Indeed in the Gulf States religious education is valued above all else; Saudi Arabia has ranks of highly qualified religious students who are of no meaningful use to their society. In Pakistan Madrassa students are made to learn the Koran by rote, surely the antithesis of critical thought. But it is up to Muslims to decide the place of religion in their societies. Secular democracy is a form of negative freedom and a universal right, but to try and implement it ourselves is morally dubious and hypocritical, especially considering the Church of England still sits in the House of Lords.

So that’s what Catholic School taught me then; Jesus had some good views about helping lepers but he almost certainly wasn’t the Son Of God and if he turned up today he’d probably be sectioned. Slightly blasphemous but there you go; if you don’t like what I say then by all means pray for my soul, I may need it after this.

I believe in your right to believe in [a] God. Just don’t tell me what I need to believe.

Multiculturalism is dead. The premise that all cultures and societies are equally advanced and equally virtuous is a fallacy. If it were true then in Britain today the state would officially endorse forced female circumcision, ‘honour’ killings, forced marriage, ritual sacrifice, witchcraft, and execution for apostasy, adultery and homosexuality. Ergo the idea that all cultural practices should be cherished equally is defunct.

The philosophy of multiculturalism grew as a result of one of the greatest unplanned migrations of human beings in history, the emigration of hundreds of thousands of former colonial subjects to Europe between 1945 and the end of the 1970s. In response to the discrimination suffered by these immigrants the Government responded with the admirable Race Relations Acts outlawing discrimination on the grounds of race. This legislation protects British citizens against racial discrimination to an extant that is still not available in France or indeed many countries of the world.

Despite the legislation passed in the 1970s the racist behaviour that continued to be perpetrated by a minority of British society has had a huge impact on the approaches taken to the integration of Britain’s minority communities. The high profile race riots of the early 80s, the football hooliganism epidemic of the same decade and the highly publicised cases of institutionalised racism, culminating in the MacPherson report, led to a general belief that any criticism of a minority community was nothing short of naked racism. By the 1990s there existed a culture of puritanical self censorship in relation to Britain’s minority communities. Everyone has heard the stories of zealous local councils banning Christmas decorations, the banning of representations of pigs or other ‘offensive’ items and the millions of pounds that are spent translating information into Urdu, Hindi and the myriad of other languages emanating from the Indian sub-continent.

Multiculturalism exploded out of this mindset, which by the 1990s pervaded every level of bureaucracy from the village hall to Whitehall. The fundamental precepts of the British state, the individual’s right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech which already allowed communities to peacefully co-exist were deemed insufficient. Thus the differences between communities were to be cherished; the religious sensibilities of citizens could overpower the secular laws of the state. The law exempting Sikhs from wearing motorcycle helmets was the thin end of the wedge.

Multiculturalism is a noble idea with brave aims. It aspired to bring an end to the petty racism that scarred elements of British society and to bring sometimes disparate communities together for the benefit of a peaceful and harmonious state. To some extant it has been successful in dealing with effect of unplanned mass migration from non-European cultures. Racist discrimination in Britain while not extinct is, perhaps, relatively negligible. Furthermore British people are integrated, to various degrees, with the different religious and ethnic communities that populate their towns and cities and Britain has one of the highest rates of inter-racial marriage in the world. It can certainly be said that the benign aspects of multiculturalism such as cuisine, fashion and music have helped to improve Britain’s national culture and society.

The scar afflicting British society is no longer racism; it is separation, ghettoisation and the surrender of national values and principles. The confusion between racism and multiculturalism has led to significant developments in British society which have been blithely accepted by citizens and politicians alike. Apart from the odd world cup there is little celebration of a national culture in Britain today. For a country that bequeathed the world industrialisation, the works of Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin, the television, the computer and the internet, amongst much else, there often seems little to celebrate. Aside from sporting events celebrations of national culture are muted, perhaps even frowned upon. Perhaps the end of nationalism is a good thing, after all aggressive nationalism cost millions of lives in the last century and maybe its demise is the natural progression of the post-industrial state. However we seem to be loosing sight of the fundamental basics of our society; personal freedom, tolerance and respect for the rule of law that have allowed almost one thousand years of prosperity and progress. Perhaps we have forgotten how far this country has come.

Since 1492 Western Europe has experienced the Renaissance, the Reformation, The Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Social Revolution of the twentieth century. In five hundred years the power of the church over people’s lives has been broken. Science and rationalism have debunked many of the church’s teachings and led to a rapid transformation of industry, science, healthcare and leisure. Thanks to the hardships of their ancestors over the recent centuries Europeans have reasonable control over their own lives; they are well educated and they have built tolerant, egalitarian and almost meritocratic democracies. A country such as, say, Saudi Arabia has experienced none of these things. Isolated from the West until the 1930s this is a country that did not experience any social development from the middle ages until the oil bonanza of the latter part of the twentieth century. It is a country that was parachuted into the twentieth century without the hardship and the turmoil that social revolution and industrialisation entail. It is a country dominated by an autocratic and feudal ruling class, a country in which religion controls the lives and the minds of its people, a country in which women and infidels are treated as inferior, a country in which freedom of speech, freedom of movement and the rule of civil law are unknowns. In short it is a society comparable to that of Western Europe, circa 1100 AD. I use the example of Saudi Arabia for two reasons; firstly it illustrates the fact that while all human beings are born equal the societies in which they live advance at different rates. Secondly the oil wealth this society has inherited has been used to spread its messages of hatred and intolerance to the mosques and madrassas of Western Europe. Despite the lack of official acknowledgement it is abundantly clear today that is the rise of Islamism that shatters the myth of the promised multicultural paradise

In September 2007 the West Midlands police turned a blind eye to evidence of racism and solicitation to murder occurring amongst Islamists in Birmingham. Appropriately enough for an institution chastised by the multiculturalism debate the Chief Commissioner of the force even went so for as to accuse the reporters of the crime of racism. Earlier in the year Sir Ian Blair, the Chief Commissioner of the Met, took part in a ceremony for police cadets. One female Muslim cadet refused to shake his hands stating that her religion forbade her from touching a male to whom she was not related. Apparently no one questioned whether this would allow her to carry out her duties for male members of the public. In October Muslim employees of Sainsbury’s were allowed to defer the sale of alcohol to their non-Muslim colleagues. A Muslim employee of Boots the chemists was allowed to refuse the sale of the morning after pill on religious grounds. The General Medical Council has since admitted that some Muslim students had refused to attend lectures on STDs and the effects of alcohol.

These recent examples show how far our Muslim youths have become indoctrinated by a Salafist Wahabbi strain of Islam that has replaced the Sufism of their parents. Islam is not the only culture to clash with 21st century British society but it is the inexorable rise of Wahabbist Islam that has exposed the great failing of multiculturalism. In the last ten years Britain has produced more suicide bombers than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq ever did. The laissez fayre attitude of our multicultural leaders has meant that for the last twenty years Saudi inspired Wahabbi preachers have been allowed to preach their messages of hate unmolested and sometimes even abetted by the state. Messages of tolerance and the importance of 21st century values have failed to reach the ears of our Muslim youth. It is also abundantly clear that multiculturalism has strengthened the divide between Britain’s religious communities. Some Muslim communities such as Tower Hamlets and Dewsbury have turned away from mainstream society, their youth clubs are dominated Deobondi groups and their residents rarely mix with outsiders. Saville Town in Dewsbury is some 97% Muslim. This creeping ghettoisation is compounded by the rise of Whabbist faith schools which by their very nature discriminate against children on the basis of their religion. The medieval attitudes of Saudi society show a worrying predominance in the mindset of our Muslim youths. Some 36% of young British Muslims believe in the death penalty for apostasy, polls also routinely suggest that around 25% of British Muslims support the 7th July mass murders. These are not quaint cultural quirks they are sickening, dangerous and a damning indictment of the failure of multiculturalism. British society will not only pay the price in terms of social conflict but also in the spectre of terrorism, on a monthly basis small groups of British Islamist youths are tried and convicted of committing terrorist offences in the UK. Who knows how far the medieval doctrine of Islamism has buried itself in the soul of British Islam?

How then do we end the creeping radicalisation of our Muslim youth and the deepening separation in our towns and cities? How do we create a society in which the right to freedom of religion is respected but the laws of the state are safeguarded and society is well integrated and united?

Only by espousing the fundamental values of a post-industrial society can we prosper. Freedom to choose religion, sexuality, political views and freedom of speech are fundamental human values. They are not the exclusive right of the West. It is simply the fact that Western society has developed exponentially over the last five hundred years and left pre-industrial societies in its wake. It is often difficult to believe that until relatively recently we shared many of the cultural traits of less enlightened societies. For example just one hundred years ago public kissing was illegal in Paris, homosexuality was only repealed in Britain in the 1960s and the introduction of capital punishment for adultery was only narrowly avoided in Victorian Britain. It is time to take pride in the achievements of our country and to give a helping hand to people who are struggling to escape the suffocation of pre-industrial societies.

To be loosing the war of ideas with Whabbist fundamentalists in 21st century Britain is inexcusable; all it requires is plenty of backbone and a little organisation. First of all we must find a Government that is brave enough to bring an end to faith schools. Religious education is not the responsibility of the state and religious schools usually only thrive in countries such as Pakistan, in which the Government has failed in its educational obligations. Furthermore the religious syllabuses of these schools encourage separation from society on a religious basis. The use of Saudi textbooks that promote the supremacy of Islam is a worrying trend in modern Britain; multicultural Salafism is not.

If we do not loose our Muslim youths in our schools then they our lost in our mosques and madrassas. The rhetoric of Salafist firebrands is easily countered by imams who are educated both in the Quran and the 21st century society. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Government to encourage the rise of moderate imams while deporting foreign citizens who encourage terrorism, race-hate and murder. Even Saudi Arabia, the homeland of extremism, has had great success in re-educating Al Qaeda convicts and spreading the preaching of moderate imams. In Islamic countries with Sufi traditions, such as Jordan and Turkey, many practicing female Muslims leave their hair uncovered and the Niqab is virtually unheard of. Such an enlightened approach to Islam is sadly unthinkable on the streets of Tower Hamlets today.

Most importantly our political leaders need to stress the fundamental values of British society and never back down in the face of opposition. Female circumcision, ‘honour’ killings, forced marriage, ritual sacrifice, witchcraft, and execution for apostasy, adultery and homosexuality are despicable crimes and our country should lead the fight against them. We can offer our citizens everything; peace, security, freedom to worship, a stake in society but citizens must also understand their own responsibilities.

If it comes to a battle of values we cannot loose unless we choose to. Al Qaeda can never offer people anything other than death, destruction and hatred; every terrorist atrocity is a propaganda defeat for its perpetrators. In order to succeed we must offer the hand of friendship to our lost generation of Muslims and ensure that their children are brought up to know that they are lucky to be a Muslim in 21st century Britain.

The decision to invade Iraq was undoubtedly a strategic mistake, morally dubious and incredibly costly in terms of blood and treasure. However there is still an opportunity for the U.S. to salvage a tactical victory from the wreckage of a shattered project. The initial grand visions for the Iraq project have rightly been consigned to the dustbin of history. Iraq was not a threat to Western interests, Saddam never had any contact with Bin Laden and indeed the war sparked a truly international Jihad just as Al Qaeda seemed to be on the ropes. The central premise of the war, that democracies stifle terrorism, was always a fallacy; democratic Britain has produced far more suicide bombers than Saddam’s Iraq ever did. Indeed with the bombing of the Samarra mosque and near civil war in 2006 it seemed as if the U.S. might be on the brink of a strategic humiliation in the Land of the Two Rivers. Iraq was poised to destroy itself in internecine warfare, Al Qaeda had announced the founding of its Caliphate in Anbar and the Baker-Hamilton report endorsed the strategic drawdown of U.S. troops. If the U.S. had lost its nerve during that nightmarish summer then there can be little doubt that Iraq would have descended into the kind of bloodshed not seen since the Rwandan genocide.

Instead Iraq may have been saved by the same man who initiated its catastrophe. It was Bush’s stubbornness and unassailable self-belief that led him into Iraq and it was those same features that enabled him to ignore the clamour for a withdrawal and instead send more U.S. troops into the Mesopotamian meat-grinder. To have drawn down U.S. forces in 2006 would surely have allowed Al Qaeda to claim that they had defeated the superpower as they did in Somalia and Afghanistan. The effect of this on a generation of impressionable, young Muslims across the world can be easily imagined. Furthermore without a force to separate the warring Sunni and Shia, Iraq had the very real potential to collapse into the same open warfare that tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s. This was the nadir of the Iraq project; suicide bombs killed Shia by the dozen, Shia militias killed Sunnis by the hundred. Caught in between the two, the U.S. was fighting a bloody, seemingly un-winnable war against the fanatical Al Qaeda terrorists who had plunged the country into chaos. The depressing spectre of Vietnam had raised its head over the American psyche and all seemed lost. During the Vietnam War Congress, faced with a bloody, far-away war lost its nerve and withdrew funding to the South Vietnamese Government; causing its inevitable collapse and a victory for the Communist North. Though he often seems wilfully ignorant of politcal history Bush had at least learned one lesson from the defeat in Vietnam, namely that for an insurgency to succeed it must win the battle for public opinion. The Vietcong achieved this when in 1975 U.S. resolve crumbled under public pressure. For all his faults, and they are many, Bush at least had the strength to stand up for his own beliefs even when all around were counselling otherwise. By authorising the surge of U.S. troops he may very well have turned what could have been an unmitigated disaster into a tactical victory.

Under the command of counter-insurgency expert, General Petraeus, the U.S. poured thousands more of its troops into Iraq at the end of 2006. Contrary to popular belief the bloodshed in Iraq was not being caused by the U.S. presence, Iraq Body Count estimates that U.S. troops were directly responsible for around 1.6% of all violent deaths in 2007. Virtually all the violence was being caused by Al Qaeda, the Ba’athists, Shia militias and criminal gangs. All of these groups stood to increase their activities in the event of a U.S. withdrawal. While the surge led to an increase in the number of civilians killed by U.S. forces the pressure applied to the terrorist groups led to a reduction of the overall number of violent deaths in Iraq over a 12 month period. These results provide a final refutation of the idea that the violence in Iraq is caused by U.S. troops. If this was so how could an extra 30,000 U.S. troops lead to a massive decrease in civilian deaths? The U.S. has also begun to develop more sophisticated tactics to contain the insurgency under the expert guidance of General Petraeus. Furthermore it was also becoming clear that while Al Qaeda operatives may have been well versed in the Hadith they had clearly spent less time reading insurgency manuals. The massive suicide bombs against innocent civilians had long provoked disquiet amongst nationalist Sunni insurgents; when Al Qaeda began to take over Iraqi provinces to proclaim their Caliphate they essentially shot themselves in the foot. The idea of a pan-Islamic Caliphate is Al Qaeda’s ultimate goal and its failure in Iraq has been a devastating blow to the organisation. Al Qaeda operatives began to force their way of life on ordinary Iraqis through torture and summary execution. The Sunnis of Anbar and Baghdad, perhaps the most westernised of Iraqis, began to rebel against this new form of totalitarian rule. This development serves as a glimpse of why Al Qaeda can never achieve its goals. Western society allows people to choose their lifestyle; Islamism like Communism tells people how to live, by force if necessary. In 2007 the Sunni nationalists began to force Al Qaeda out of Anbar and finally realised that four years of insurgency had done more to destroy their country than the temporary humiliation of a foreign occupation. The U.S. has been quick to jump on this development and drafted former Sunni insurgents into Awakening Councils to fight the foreign Al Qaeda fighters. As a result the Pentagon is now debating whether to allow soldiers to take off their body armour on patrol in Anbar, once the graveyard of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Undoubtedly Iraq is still an exceptionally violent country and it has taken an unjustifiable amount of blood and treasure to reach even this precarious position. However in the clash between the freedom of the West and the Islamism of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s hopes have been destroyed. Not only have Al Qaeda failed to force the U.S. out of Iraq but their fellow Sunnis have turned against them and are working side by side with the Americans. If in time Iraq can be sufficiently stabilised then there is a chance that it could be run as that unique thing, a free and democratic Arab state. Undoubtedly that is a long way off. U.S. forces may have to be based there for several decades, as they have in South Korea. Furthermore Iraq needs to find a way of reconciling its Sunni and Shia populations. Without a breakthrough in national reconciliation the country will again find itself sliding inexorably toward civil war.

However let us assume for a moment that the breakthrough does take place, what would the future hold for Iraq? If, as seems likely, oil prices remain high then the Government will have plenty of funds to begin reconstruction and buy off troublesome sectors of society. Provided that Sunnis have a stake in the running of the country U.S. forces will one day be able to withdraw to an over-watch role in Sunni areas. A U.S. backed Iraqi National Army will then gradually begin to take over responsibility for tackling the insurgency and criminal activity. A relatively stable Iraq and a growing economy may attract the doctors, teachers and traders who had earlier fled the chaos of the near civil war. An oil rich Iraqi Government could stimulate this reverse migration with grants for returning families. If the security situation remains calm the U.S. should slowly be able to begin to withdraw some forces and pull the rest back to desert bases. Better relations with Syria and Iran may also help to stem the flow of insurgents who have destroyed Iraq’s economy and infrastructure. However low-level violence will inevitably continue and U.S troops will have to remain in the country for at least another decade. Furthermore the extreme Islamism of the Shia majority will remain entrenched, especially around Basra and the South. We will never have Switzerland-on-the-Tigris but Iraq could turn out to be a well of stability, democracy and economic development in the Middle East. One thing that is certain is that although Al Qaeda will remain militarily undefeated its ideology had its day of reckoning with democracy and it lost, emphatically. And who might the Iraqi history books one day thank for that? Well the same man they may vilify for invading their country; George W. Bush