2023 has been an eventful year for free thought, humanism and secularism. Below, Emma Park and Daniel James Sharp look back on some of the major issues that have been debated in the Freethinker this year.

I. Free speech, religion and the culture wars

Free thought and intellectual progress are not possible without a shared culture of free speech, open debate and a willingness to engage with different points of view. One of the Freethinker’s concerns this year has been with attempts to repress free speech, especially in the UK and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, and in the context of the ‘culture wars’.

In Ireland, a new bill on hate offences threatens to undermine free speech, not just about religion but on a variety of the most sensitive topics – in other words, topics on which open debate is crucial. In Wakefield, England, in February, a non-Muslim woman, presumably under pressure, donned a veil and made a humiliating public apology in the local mosque, because her autistic son had brought a copy of the Quran into school and it was accidentally scuffed. And Puffin has made attempts to censor Roald Dahl in the name of ‘sensitivity’.

Free speech at universities also remains under pressure, as illustrated by the case of Professor Steven Greer, who was hounded by Bristol University Islamic Society in a smear campaign that was supported by academic colleagues who should have known better. Daniel reviewed Greer’s book about his experiences.

Across the pond, Professor Alex Byrne’s contract for a book critical of gender identity ideology was cancelled by Oxford University Press, but has since been published by Polity. From a different perspective, former vice chancellor Julius Weinberg argued that ‘freedom of speech is not as simple as my right to express my ideas’.

To supporters of democracy in Hong Kong, the culture wars are all but an irrelevance. The suffocating control of the Chinese Communist Party, said Kevin Yam, forced campaigners across the political spectrum to work together.

II. Science, philosophy, and humanism

As well as exploring the issues of the day, the Freethinker has also explored some of their deeper philosophical and historical contexts.

We interviewed the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett about the relationship between philosophy and science, meaning and consciousness in a godless, Darwinian universe, and New Atheism. With historian Charles Freeman, we discussed the richness and variety of the ancient Greek mind and how the coming of Christian orthodoxy put an end to that tradition. And we caught up with the humanist and author Sarah Bakewell to explore different traditions of humanism.

Meanwhile, Matt Johnson and Daniel Sharp both contributed articles about one of the most famous freethinkers of recent years, the late Christopher Hitchens.

III. Islam and free thought

With the rise of Islam in Britain and across the West, it has become urgent to consider how far the religion can be compatible with Western values and approaches. To explore this question, we interviewed Taj Hargey, possibly Britain’s only liberal imam. Other contributors have explored the need to rekindle irreverence for Islam in Muslim thought around the world, why the hijab is not a good symbol for women, and whether it is possible to distinguish between religious and political Islam.

IV. Secularism

Secularism is the principle that religion and state should be separated, and that religion should have no undue influence on public life. In the UK, thanks to a combination of political apathy and entrenched privilege, we still have an established church and unelected clergy in Parliament. Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer, spoke to the Freethinker about why he introduced a bill to disestablish the Church of England.

With a general election on the cards for 2024, Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society discussed where the political parties stand on faith schools. Two recent events in which the NSS participated revealed some of the challenges involved in secularisation. Daniel also argued in an article for Only Sky that the Church of England’s record on gay marriage is another reason to hasten disestablishment.

Other contributors to the Freethinker have looked at secularism, its history and future, in Québec, Turkey and Wales, and the strengths and weaknesses of French-style laïcité.

Did you know that, while the advancement of any religion, as well as of humanism, is considered a charitable aim under English law, the advancement of free thought, atheism or secularism is not? See Emma’s piece for New Humanist.

V. Israel and Palestine

One of the year’s biggest events—the Hamas attack against Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war—has produced a wide range of often emotional and heated responses. In contrast to all this sound and fury, the Freethinker has published a series of articles dealing with the conflict from different and often disagreeing, but rationally and charitably argued perspectives.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid wrote about the ‘leftist postcolonial apologia’ for Hamas and argued that the Israel-Palestine conflict is, at root, a religious one, while in Emma’s interview with Taj Hargey, the imam was staunch in his support of the ‘occupied and oppressed’ Palestinians. Hina Husain wrote about her Pakistani upbringing and being inculcated with Islam-based anti-Semitism. Finally, Ralph Leonard responded to all these articles, arguing that the conflict is, in fact, inspired more by competing nationalisms than religious impulses.

VI. Republicanism

Free thought and secularism have been closely intertwined with republicanism in British history. The Freethinker has reinforced this link since its beginnings in 1881.

This year, we have continued in the same spirit of religious and political anti-authoritarianism, publishing a review by Daniel of the republican activist Graham Smith’s anti-monarchy book. Later in the year, Daniel interviewed Graham Smith in person at Conway Hall. Meanwhile, Emma delved into the archives to discover the connection between the Freethinker and Republic, of which Smith is the CEO.

See also Daniel’s article on the republican Thomas Paine’s influence on Christopher Hitchens and Tony Howe’s discussion of an even earlier famous British republican, John Milton.

VII. Free thought history

In June, we were saddened to hear of the death of Jim Herrick (1944-2023), former editor of the Freethinker. Bob Forder, NSS historian, wrote an obituary commemorating Jim’s lifelong dedication to free thought, humanism and secularism.

The composer Frances Lynch wrote a guest post about her rediscovery of Eliza Flower, a radical nineteenth-century composer associated with Conway Hall, who was neglected by the historical record because she was female.

We have also been reflecting on the history of the Freethinker and of the various non-religious movements in the UK. Former editor Nigel Sinnott kindly agreed to let us republish an article he wrote for the magazine in 1970 in which he discussed the complicated historical relationship between humanists and secularists. Historian Charlie Lynch introduced the recent book he co-wrote with two other academics charting the history of organised humanism in Britain, which Emma has also reviewed for New Humanist. And Bob Forder argued that free thought and secularism are inseparable.

VIII. The future of free thought

Artificial intelligence has made great strides in 2023. (We even used Dall-E, a generative AI model, to illustrate this post.) Given the exponential pace of development, it is clear that the implications need to be monitored very carefully. For instance, there are concerns that ChatGPT may be biased in favour of certain interpretations of Islam. And artificial general intelligence (AGI) may be just around the corner, making ethical oversight all the more urgent.

Emma and Daniel spoke about the nature of free thought and the challenges facing it today and in the future on the Humanism Now podcast, on Freethought Hour and to the Reading Humanists. Emma also spoke to the Central London Humanists about Pastafarianism, arguably the world’s fastest growing religion, and a topic about which there is much to say.

This year also saw the publication of two intriguing books about the impact of digital technology on free thought, one by Simon McCarthy-Jones, and another by Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan. Emma interviewed Laura Dodsworth for the Freethinker and reviewed both books for the Literary Review. We will be looking further at the implications of digital technology for free thought in 2024.

Finally, a request for your support…

The Freethinker is an independent, non-profit journal and completely open-access. We are funded by donations and legacies given by generations of readers back to the 19th century – and not by big corporations or billionaires. To keep us going in the future, we depend on the generosity of readers today. If you believe in the importance of fostering a culture of free thought, open enquiry and irreverence, please consider making a donation via this link.

And don’t forget to sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter, to keep abreast of the latest developments in free thought in the UK and around the world.

Postscript: a merry Christmas of sorts from Christopher Hitchens…

The post Year in review: 2023 appeared first on The Freethinker.

Introduction

On 25 November, 2023, at the historic Conway Hall in London, I met Graham Smith, the CEO of the anti-monarchy campaigning group Republic—an organisation whose origin can be traced back through the pages of The Freethinker. Read more about that connection in ‘The Freethinker and early republicanism’. See also ‘Bring on the British republic’ for my review of Smith’s book Abolish the Monarchy: Why We Should and How We Will.

Smith was the guest speaker at the National Secular Society’s Members’ Day at Conway Hall, and I managed to talk to him in the foyer café before he went off to give his very well-received talk on the connections between monarchy and religion, and between secularism and republicanism. Below is an edited transcript of our short but illuminating conversation.

Interview

Freethinker: At the coronation of Charles III, you and several other anti-monarchy protesters were arrested [see links above for more]. Could you give us an update on how the case is going?

Graham Smith: There are no major updates. It has gone off to a judge for an application for judicial review. The assumption is that we will be granted the judicial review and then we will see what happens after that.

What are the historical links between secularism and republicanism?

If you look historically, you will very often see intellectual links between those arguing against the domination of established churches and those who opposed monarchy. There is an old quote, whose origin I cannot remember right now: ‘Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.’ [These are, in fact, the words of the 18^th-century Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot.]

This is not something that I would condone! But the sentiment is that these things are very much linked and so the opposition to them is linked and always has been. And certainly, the National Secular Society and Republic have quite a lot of overlap in terms of our interests and members and so on, even though we have not really worked together. I think it is difficult to argue for a secular state without arguing for the abolition of the monarchy and vice versa.

Could you have a secular monarchy? 

No, I do not think you can. You can have a non-secular republic—in Ireland, God gets a mention in the constitution, and for many years the Irish constitution gave a privileged position to the Catholic Church. But I do not think that makes intellectual sense. You also have disestablishment in monarchies like Sweden and Norway, but that is a bit of a halfway house because the monarch is still a member of one church and is very much a churchgoer, and thus that church is privileged through that relationship even if it is technically, by law, not established. I do not think you are going to get a secular state without getting rid of the monarchy. [For an alternative view, see Emma Park’s interview with Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer who introduced a disestablishment bill in the House of Lords on 6 December.]

Does one or the other—republicanism or secularism—have to come first?

It is hard to say. I think it may well be that the monarchy goes first because it is the bigger, more potent symbol of everything that has to change in Britain. I do not think there is the same appetite for disestablishment in the way that there is an appetite for abolishing the monarchy. It is interesting that over the last 25 years, we have seen a lot of pressure to get rid of the House of Lords, the monarchy, and the established church. Hopefully, the Lords will go in the next one or two years. And these three things are all connected.  I think we will see them all unravelling—one will go, then another, then another. Though in which order it will happen, who knows?

How was your anti-monarchy book received?

On the whole, it has gone down well. I got a couple of annoying reviews from monarchists, which is a good sign. One of the reasons I wrote it is because there is not enough literature about the monarchy and why it should be abolished. Most books about the royals are just inane nonsense.

Even though the history books talk about many of the monarchs being thugs and murderers, there is always this undertone—‘Oh, isn’t the monarchy so great and interesting? And don’t worry, they’re not like this anymore!’. But that history is one of the reasons we should get rid of them—not because they are still doing things like that, but because it is a celebration of that history, which is not a reason to celebrate.

Have you had any thoughtful reviews from monarchists?

Yes. Surprisingly, The Telegraph’s review was the most interesting. The reviewer described herself as a ‘soft monarchist’, which is a term I use in the book, and she really engaged with my arguments. She thought monarchists should be worried because there are lots of cracks in their armour and lots of weaknesses in their position, and they should be alert to that.

What is the strongest argument for the monarchy in your view? I have always thought it was the superficially convincing one made by, among others, George Orwell: that it is a check on political extremism because it diverts extreme emotion away from politicians. In other words, it prevents tyranny.

Yes. The fact that Orwell, a respected writer, made it, means that it is an argument that is taken seriously. Churchill said something similar—that if they had kept the Kaiser, Germany would not have had Hitler. But these claims are completely ahistorical. Two of the Axis powers were monarchies. The Italian king Victor Emmanuel III put Mussolini in power and sat there for 20 years and let him get on with it. And the Kaiser was keen to put his family back on the throne under or with Hitler. So, if anything, the Orwellian argument shows the weakness of monarchy.

And, of course, Emperor Hirohito was not just a monarch, but apparently a divine being.

Indeed! The problem is that that stifles critical thinking and it stifles opposition, and those things are very important if you want to avoid things like imperial conflicts.

How do you think Charles III is doing as king?

That is like asking how a chair is doing as a chair. It just sits there and is a chair, and he just sits there and is a king. He does not have to do anything. He just is. And people judge them [monarchs and royals] by their own standards, so if they go around waving and allowing their acolytes to say good things on their behalf, then that is judged to be fine, so long as there is not some huge scandal. The bar is set incredibly low.

But Charles is a man who is accused of exchanging honours for cash. He is accused of handling millions of pounds of cash from Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, a Qatari businessman and former Prime Minister of Qatar accused of having links with al-Qaeda. He is accused of lobbying behind the scenes for all sorts of things. He is not a good head of state. Anybody could be a good king because being a monarch is about biological descent alone, but to be a good head of state is to be someone who is principled, eloquent, accountable and accessible, and on all these scores Charles is dreadful.

In terms of religion, Charles was never going to be genuinely ecumenical or for all faiths, and certainly not for those who do not have a faith. The royals pay lip service to ecumenicism, and I think some people were really surprised by how much Charles doubled down on all the feudal religious nonsense during the coronation—but it was because he believed all that nonsense!

One of the problems is that you do not get to ask Charles questions directly and challenge him about these issues. So it is all about reading the tea leaves and believing people like Jonathan Dimbleby when it comes to the true beliefs of the royals.

Have you ever met Charles? Or been in the same room as him and tried to ask him a question?

I have been within shouting distance! I have been almost as close to him as I am to you now, calling out questions, but obviously, he just blanks me. That is the one thing the royals are good at, blanking people. They just blank people they do not want to acknowledge, including their own staff.

What would a British republic with a written constitution look like?

It would look like a modern, grown-up democracy where we would have a fully elected parliament. We would still have a prime minister but they would not have the same power, derived from the Crown, that they have now. We would have clearly defined limits to that power and these limits would be policed and monitored by an elected head of state. The head of state would be there to be our ambassador but also to guard our constitution. So a republic would just take all the nonsense out of it. And if we want pageantry and ceremony, we can do that. Other republics, like France and Greece, do it quite well.

Having a republic would ultimately mean that our constitution and our politics would be done in a serious, intelligent, accountable way.

What is the single, essential thing that makes the monarchy and our political or constitutional system rotten, in your view?

The fact that we still have the same system we had after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-1689. All that has happened since then is that there have been compromises between those in Parliament and those in the Palace. There has never been a serious democratic evolution that shifts power to the people in this country. Instead, we have had the centralisation of power propped up and disguised by all the trappings of the monarchy—that is the big problem.

Is it anti-British to be anti-monarchy?

I would say it is very pro-British to be anti-monarchy. Being against anything bad is being in favour of where you live. One of the things that annoys me the most about monarchists is when they say that we would not be anything without the monarchy. I think that is the least patriotic thing you could say. To rubbish this amazing country of 65 million people by saying that it would not be much without this very, very tedious and ordinary family—that is a weird and unpatriotic thing to say.

And, of course, there is also the great British tradition of republicanism and radicalism, which is just as much a part of our patriotic heritage as the monarchy.

Yes. History is written by the victors, by those in power, and we do not get to hear about the radicals. And when we do hear about them, they are dismissed as fringe people, while everyone else is just getting on with their lives as serfs and plebs.

Yet the anti-slavery movement was one of the largest, if not the largest, working-class movements in British history. You do not hear about that. You only hear about William Wilberforce and the anti-slavery MPs.

We have a long history in this country of fighting against the things that monarchy represents, and we just have to continue until it is gone.

What is the future of British republicanism?

We will win. I think that the monarchy will come to an end. I think that people have realised in the last twelve months that that is quite likely. There is no longer this sense of an immovable object. I think that republicans will continue to see the polling shift in our favour. Support for the monarchy has dropped significantly over the years. Once support for the monarchy drops below 50 per cent, we will see things unravel in quite good order.

Would you care to venture a prediction as to when exactly the monarchy will go?

No. I suppose I would say that there is a reasonable chance that Prince William will become king, but I think the chance of his son George becoming king is quite small.

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Further reading on secularism and republicanism:

Image of the week: Charles Bradlaugh’s study after his death, by Walter Sickert, by Bob Forder

Introducing ‘Paine: A Fantastical Visual Biography’, by Polyp, by Paul Fitzgerald

Is all publicity good publicity? How the first editor of the Freethinker attracted the public’s attention, by Clare Stainthorp

Charles Bradlaugh and George Jacob Holyoake: their contrasting reputations as Secularists and Radicals, by Edward Royle

Freethought in the 21st century – interview of The Freethinker editor Emma Park by Christoph De Spiegeleer

Christopher Hitchens and the long afterlife of Thomas Paine, by Daniel James Sharp

The post ‘I do not think you are going to get a secular state without getting rid of the monarchy’: interview with Graham Smith appeared first on The Freethinker.

Quebec holds a cultural distinction in the framework of the Canadian Federation that should be better understood and appreciated. The Quebecois know what it means to take pride, collectively, in what they have fought for. Yet too often and by too many, Quebec is harshly and wrongly called racist for its pride in preserving its secularist, pluralist culture. This culture is the very same one that endless numbers of new Canadians—immigrants and refugees—freely choose to adopt by coming to Quebec to create new lives for themselves.

Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québéçois, made this point during a press conference before he met with Amira Elghawaby, the federally-appointed anti-Islamophobia adviser, earlier this year. Elghawaby had written in 2019 that ‘the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.’ This was in response to public support for Bill 21, a Quebec law placing limits on the wearing of religious clothing by several types of public sector workers. Blanchet’s response to her was: ‘Someone who says Quebec is racist needs to know more about Quebec.’ I agree with him on this point. Unless you study Quebec’s history, you will have little understanding of the sociocultural and sociopolitical transformations that the province underwent after 1960, during the period of la Révolution Tranquille (‘the Quiet Revolution’).

Before the Quiet Revolution swept across the province, Quebec was a largely rural and conservative society dominated and maintained by the Catholic Church, which promoted traditional social hierarchies. During the first half of the 19th century, the Catholic Church wielded significant power in the cultural, religious and political spheres, especially in higher education. In fact, the province set up a Ministry of Public Instruction in 1868 but abolished it in 1875 due to pressure from the Church. Catholic religious leaders combined nationalism with anti-secular Ultramontane ideas to further their interests and increase their authority.

Conservative Catholic domination of Quebec reached its apogee in la Grande Noirceur (‘the Great Darkness’), the period during which Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis’ Union Nationale party held power (from 1936 to 1939 and again from 1944 to 1959). Duplessis viewed Quebec as a Catholic province and ran it with an iron fist, as if it were his own private Catholic corporation. He championed values aligned with the Church and allowed Catholic leaders to directly participate in education, health services, and social assistance, thus affirming the idea of a Quebec that was distinctively and exclusively Catholic. The Duplessis era was the culmination of centuries of Catholic domination of the social and cultural framework of the province.

By the 1960s, the people of Quebec were no longer willing to remain subservient to the clergy and its political backers. ‘Things have to change,’ was one of the slogans of Quebec’s Liberal Party, led by Jean Lesage, during the 1960 election campaign. The victory of Lesage in that year was the beginning of a period of nearly 20 years of dramatic modernisation. New, progressive approaches were adopted in the social and political realms.

Notably, the Liberal government set up a Ministry of Education which created a state-controlled education system and gave women the same rights to higher education as men. It also effectively secularised Quebec by decoupling Church and state and limiting religious influence in public institutions. Since the 1960s, Quebec’s identity has been rooted in the ideal of secular governance; it is seen by Quebecois as a place where all people are represented fairly, rather than one governed by ecclesiastical power in which the clergy dominates the people.   

This brings us back to Bill 21 and Quebecois secularism today. Should accommodations for religious minorities be granted? If so, how should they be implemented and what are the limitations on such accommodations?

There are justified criticisms of Bill 21 but there is also much misunderstanding about it. These misunderstandings often stem from two different traditions and interpretations of secularism. In the English-speaking world, secularism focuses on individual freedom of religion whereas in the French-speaking world, laïcité focuses on the collective freedom from religion. This is because the English-speaking and French-speaking worlds have had different historical experiences with religion. In general, the French sought freedom from the dominance of the Catholic Church and the English fought for the individual’s freedom to worship according to their conscience.

Bill 21 is in the spirit of the secularism of the French Republic, which has also been accused of racism because of its enforcement of laïcité for religious minorities. Such accusations are misplaced, however. Bill 21 makes no distinction, for example, between the types of religious symbols worn or displayed. All religions are removed from the public sphere, and this is seen as an equaliser for the benefit of all Quebecois citizens.

‘Est Québécois qui veut l’être’ (‘Whoever wants to be a Quebecer is one’), said René Lévesque during his victory speech after the 1976 Quebec election. The ethical importance of that statement is that the social criteria for being Quebecois are not centred on ethnicity or allegiance to any religion but instead are founded in the upholding, understanding and embracing of the immemorial values of Quebec society. These values are the values of the Enlightenment, as well as liberalism and democracy.

Opponents of Bill 21 see it as a ‘racist’ ban on religious symbols. They see it as an assault on religious minorities in Quebec and argue that it misapplies the principle of religious neutrality as understood in Canadian law. This Canadian principle, which is an interpretation by the Supreme Court of Canada, holds that governments must remain neutral on questions of religion by neither favouring nor disfavouring any particular belief. This implies that although the Canadian government cannot be explicitly religious, it also cannot be explicitly anti-religious: the state must treat religious groups equally.

The problem created by treating religious groups equally is that it opens the door to limitless demands from all religious groups, including illiberal ones. These groups would have criticism of religion designated as hate speech. They would have illiberal and bigoted practices—such as the imposition of Sharia family courts—be not just tolerated but approved of. Treating religious groups equally is mistaken because it falsely assumes that they consist of a homogenous community that can be represented by one or a few loud (usually conservative and male) voices. It thus disregards the repressive treatment that minorities within these minorities often face and it sets up bigoted, misogynistic interpretations of religious doctrine as the one true version that must be respected and accommodated.

Bill 21 does not misapply religious neutrality. It understands and applies it through a French lens. This differs from the English lens that interprets religious neutrality on the federal level. This is perhaps why Anglophone Quebecois were more upset with the bill than their Francophone fellows—indeed, English-language school boards were exempted from the law by Canada’s Supreme Court. It is important to recall that the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Constitution, which was invoked by Quebec’s National Assembly in passing Bill 21, was intended precisely so that unreasonable court decisions could be rejected by Parliament and provincial legislatures. In 1981, Justice Minister Jean Chrétien stated clearly that the clause would allow legislatures to quickly ‘correct absurd situations’ resulting from court decisions. ‘We needed to have the supremacy of the legislature over the courts,’ Peter Lougheed, then the Alberta premier, who suggested the clause in the final negotiations on the Constitution in the early 1980s, explained. ‘We did not [want] to be in a position where public policy was being dictated or determined by non-elected people.’

The question, then, is this: What kind, or rather kinds, of religious beliefs will be accommodated, permitted and tolerated? Quebec more than perhaps the rest of Canada at present has an excellent chance of strengthening its vigorously pluralistic society. But for this to happen, religious groups need to be compelled to abandon certain presumptions that are incompatible with Quebec’s open liberal democratic society—and should certainly not be allowed to undermine Quebecois secularism.

‘A nation is judged by how it treats its minorities,’ Lévesque once said. Must we now shy away from treating religious minorities with the same maturity as we would any other religious group? Why should we not have the same expectations of minority groups as with any others? Should they not be expected to assimilate and to be open to justified criticism of their practices and beliefs? Is it not insulting to give special protections to their feelings of offence?

The domestication of religion is one of the unremitting responsibilities, as well as one of the hallmarks, of civilisation. Those who, inspired by nebulous notions of diversity, equity and inclusion, would cast aside liberal and Enlightenment values, must understand that they would be throwing away the very things that make liberal democracy a system worth having in the first place. Quebec’s Bill 21 is an assertion of liberalism in the spirit of the Quiet Revolution, not a negation of it, and the values of laïcité are among the most precious—and hard-won—that Quebec has.

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Further reading:

The Catholic Church in Canada

The Pope’s Apology, by Ray Argyle

Varieties of secularism

How laïcité can save secularism, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The post Quebec’s French-style secularism: history and enduring value appeared first on The Freethinker.

A 16 year old girl, Armita Geravand, is one of the latest victims of the Iranian regime’s oppressive hijab laws. She was assaulted by the so-called morality police for not wearing a hijab. After going into a coma, she died in custody on 28 October.

The images of Armita Geravand in a coma are terrifying and disturbingly similar to those of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was killed by Iran’s ‘morality police’ for donning an ‘improper’ hijab.

According to reports, Mahsa Amini was tortured in the back of a police van. She died after suffering significant head injuries during this abuse. She became a global symbol of resistance to religious orthodoxy, and many people are determined to say her name in protest against the sexism and misogyny that is condoned by religious doctrine.

Tragically, the first anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death has been marked by the death of another young woman in similar circumstances. This shows that there is still a long way to go in the struggle against the imposition of the hijab on women regardless of their views – both in Iran and elsewhere.

Some people, however, have chosen to actually ‘celebrate’ the hijab, rather than the brave women who have refused to wear it and in some cases died for their refusal.

In Smethwick, Birmingham, a 16-foot-tall steel statue depicting a woman wearing a hijab has been constructed and was due to be installed last month. The title, The Strength of the Hijab, which is written on a tablet at the statue’s base, is a betrayal of the brave women who refused to wear this restrictive clothing and were destroyed by their own resoluteness and dignity. Ironically, the statue that arguably celebrates a symbol of women’s submission to men was designed by a man, the sculptor Luke Perry. Perry said that he had drawn inspiration from ‘speaking to Muslim women’; according to his Instagram page, his ‘work is often about under-represented people’.

Underneath the title of the piece is the platitudinous statement, ‘It is a woman’s right to be loved and respected whatever she chooses to wear. Her true strength is in her heart and mind.’ This statement, superficially appealing but fundamentally vacuous, fails to acknowledge the utter lack of ‘love and respect’ shown towards so many Muslim women around the world, whether in forcing them to cover their hair or in persecuting them when they say ‘no’.

Regardless of the intentions of Perry and Legacy West Midlands, the charity that commissioned the statue, this ‘celebration’ of the hijab unfortunately cannot help but remind viewers of the utter indifference and lack of humanity that is prevalent in the authoritarian, brutal Islamic regimes where millions of women are forced to wear it.

Of course, in Britain, some Muslim women wear the hijab as a matter of personal choice and freedom of conscience. As long as this does not impinge on the rights of others, they should be free to do so, their choice should be respected, and they should not be discriminated against.

This does not mean, however, that the hijab as a symbol should not be open to criticism. Moreover, it is important to bear in mind that in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, Islamic governments routinely violate the rights of women who break ‘modesty’ regulations, subjecting them to imprisonment and harsh penalties.

Altogether, given the connotations of theocracy and violence against women which the hijab has in contexts around the world where it is not freely chosen, you might have thought that its presence was hardly something to be celebrated.

Moreover, the mere assumption that the hijab represents all Muslim women lends credence to the orthodox assertion that women who refuse to wear it are violating divine morality laws. This may embolden religious zealots who are already hell-bent on subjugating women in the name of religious modesty. Even in Western countries, women are regularly shamed, ostracised, tortured and in some cases even killed for not complying with this restrictive clothing regime.

Not long ago, a 17 year old Muslim girl was caught on camera twerking while wearing the hijab in a busy city centre in Birmingham. The video went viral on social media, drawing harsh reactions from certain members of the Muslim community. As reported by the Mail, she was called a ‘f****** s***.’ ‘Stupid b**** needs to be killed,’ another wrote. She received death threats. Apparently, it was not her dancing that landed her in this situation. Rather, she was abused and humiliated for dancing while wearing the hijab. She was forced to apologise publicly for ‘disrespecting’ it.

The brutal killing of Banaz Mahmod still evokes horrifying images in the mind. Born and raised in a highly conservative Muslim family, she was strangled to death by her father and uncle because she disobeyed the traditional teachings of Islam and tried to escape from an arranged marriage. Liberation from what are arguably cultish ideas was viewed by her relatives as a shameful deed that would bring disgrace on the family. She was strangled and her body was buried in a suitcase in Handsworth, Birmingham.

The problem is that these women who suffer in silence are often ignored in conversations about hijab culture. The dominant narrative on social and political issues has been dominated by religious fanatics. These fanatics self-identify as the guardians of religion, and somehow they have gained recognition as the representatives of their communities.

It is a dismal reality that religious zealots enjoy a privileged status in the UK. They exploit this position to bully individuals into compliance without facing any opposition from both inside and outside the community. They shield themselves from criticism by claiming the right to freedom of religion.

A new report by the conservative think tank Policy Exchange, The Symbolic Power of the Veil, has revealed how Islamists have been permitted to dominate the debate about the religious dress code in the United Kingdom and abroad.

The report makes five policy recommendations. Most significantly, it advises that ‘the government should resist any definition of Islamophobia that inhibits the public criticism of religious practices and traditions, including dress codes.’ It also recommends that ‘the government should refrain from publicly endorsing or promoting any specific religious attire, including events such as World Hijab Day.’

As reported in the Independent, the Labour MP Khalid Mahmood supported the key findings and recommendations in the Policy Exchange report. He pointed out that ‘the wearing of the hijab clearly does not represent all Muslim women. And it is grossly insensitive to those Muslim women in Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere who are compelled against their wishes to wear the hijab to declare that it does.’

The introduction to the report highlights ‘the importance of resisting factitious accusations of “Islamophobia” too often made by Islamists against those who campaign for the human rights and freedoms of people living under oppressive regimes.’ As it rightly observes, ‘in too many societies, the control of women’s bodies through religiously-sanctioned restrictions, including those relating to clothing, [is] a key tool of oppression.’

The findings of the report, in particular the way that accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ are being weaponised to suppress debate about women’s dress codes, should be a wake-up call for legislators and administrators. Sadly, for far too long, Islamist organisations that support restricting women’s freedoms in the guise of religious modesty have dominated the conversation on their religious attire. It is a sad fact that the authorities have long been ignorant of these issues, which remain some of the most pressing in British society today.

The authorities often seem oblivious to the fact that the normalisation of religious fanaticism further marginalises already marginalised groups in society – such as women in minority communities. Such fanaticism, and its tolerance, cannot but erode the liberal, secular and democratic principles on which British laws and customs are to a large extent predicated.

It is time to talk about truly ‘inclusive’ human rights which protect everyone, instead of pandering to divisive religious preaching. The misogyny of religious fundamentalists who overtly or covertly impose dress codes on the women and girls in their sphere of influence must be resisted, not appeased.

The presumption that all religious and cultural beliefs, no matter what their content, are entirely beneficial forces that should be accommodated at all costs, and celebrated rather than criticised, needs to be debunked.

It would be wise for Legacy West Midlands to reconsider the decision that led to the commissioning of this statue. Women should be honoured for who they are, not for what they wear. They should not be forced to carry the symbolic burden of any faith or culture. Reverence for a culture should not be used as a justification for ‘celebrating’ religious and cultural ideas that conflict with human rights.

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The post The hijab is the wrong symbol to represent women appeared first on The Freethinker.

Introduction

Alex Byrne is not necessarily the sort of person whom you would have expected to become involved in the ‘culture wars’. After an initial career in advertising, he studied philosophy at Birkbeck, King’s College London and Princeton, and then did a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. In 1994 he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an Instructor in Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, where he is now a professor. Up till a few years ago, his research centred on abstract philosophical questions like the nature of ‘colour’.

Byrne became interested in the disputes over the meaning of sex and gender in about 2017, after learning about an early academic furore over the analogy or disanalogy between transgenderism and transracialism. He then had a ‘ringside seat’ in the trans debate, or gender debate as it is also known, when his wife, Carole Hooven, was ‘cancelled’ by certain people at Harvard University for publicly expressing her view that sex is biological and binary. His own book, Trouble with Gender, was under contract to Oxford University Press, but the latter withdrew from the contract last year. He discussed the possible reasons for this in an article for Quillette. Trouble with Gender will be published by Polity on 27 October 2023.

I interviewed Professor Byrne across the Atlantic via Zoom. In the edited transcript below, we explore the origins of his interest in the trans debate and his later experience of it, what the debate is actually about, his reasons for writing a book about it, and how a philosopher can contribute to the debate by making clear distinctions.

We also consider how the atmosphere in philosophy departments has changed in recent years, and whether philosophers have a duty to defend words against their destruction.

On debating the trans debate: polite notice

The Freethinker is committed to open, well-reasoned and civilised discussion, in particular on issues where dogma, authoritarianism or fear have led to the suppression or distortion of certain points of view. We are also opposed to extremism and fanaticism of any kind, considering such qualities incompatible with our guiding principles of liberty, reason and humanity. Further discussion here.

We have endeavoured to find contributors to oppose the views advocated in previous articles on the trans or gender debate, but our invitations have so far been met with silence or refusal. If there is anyone out there who has experience or expertise on this topic, and who thinks that the various arguments put forward by Alex Byrne, Helen Joyce and Eliza Mondegreen are fundamentally flawed, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please get in touch via this link.

As always, any opinions expressed below are the sole responsibility of those expressing them.

~ Emma Park, Editor

Interview

Freethinker: How did you get into philosophy in the first place?

Alex Byrne: It was a rather convoluted route. I think that is true of many philosophers. I started off doing mathematics and physics and then I worked in advertising in London for a number of years. And while I was doing that, I went to Birkbeck College in the evenings to study for a second undergraduate degree in philosophy. I had always been interested in philosophy, but in Britain at the time, it was very hard to put a name to the sorts of issues that I was interested in. I did not realise that there was an actual subject that dealt with these problems and questions that fascinated me. One formative episode was when I saw Men of Ideas by Bryan Magee. I also read AJ Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic, and found it completely enthralling. I believed for a while that logical positivism was the solution to all philosophical problems – I was soon disabused of that.

Looking back over your career in the philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics, what are the contributions you have made to these fields of which you are the most proud?

That is a difficult question. You should really ask someone else about my contributions, such as they are. I have done a lot of work on perception, and in particular the perception of colour. Most of this has been with David Hilbert, a philosopher at the University of Illinois, Chicago. We have written many papers together defending the view that colours are physical properties. In particular, they are just ways of altering the incident light. This is quite a controversial view in the philosophy of colour – a little subdiscipline of philosophy. One view that is perhaps more popular than our physicalist view goes back to the ancient Greeks, that nothing actually is coloured. Even though it seems or looks as if tomatoes are red and grass is green and the sky is blue, in fact, this is just some sort of global illusion and nothing is really coloured. Or at best, if something really is coloured, it is an item in the mind, a mental image or picture.

I think it was Democritus who said, ‘By convention hot, by convention cold, but in reality atoms and void…’

Yes. Democritus is the standard source for this eliminativist view. As that quotation brings out, it is not just colour that is supposed to be an illusion or only in the mind or a matter of convention. It is also other perceptible properties like heat, tastes, smells, sounds and so on.

How and why did you move from this rather abstruse subject to sex and gender?

I had always been interested in sex differences and the explanation of sex differences – why males and females of our species in particular differ in some trait. Also I had always been interested in issues of free speech and was temperamentally inclined towards an absolutist position about speech. And then, in 2017, the philosopher Rebecca Tuvel published a paper called ‘In Defense of Transracialism’, which appeared in the leading journal of feminist philosophy, Hypatia. There was a huge fuss about this paper, which essentially argued that the same courtesies and tolerant attitude granted to a transgender person like Caitlyn Jenner should be extended towards a transracial person like Rachel Dolezal.

The whole message of Tuvel’s paper was very progressive, and you might have thought that, within feminist philosophy, her paper would have been praised. But instead, the opposite happened: it was widely condemned as having the potential to cause great harm to various communities. An open letter appeared signed by many academics, including Judith Butler, the author of Gender Trouble, calling for the paper’s retraction. It was not retracted in the end, fortunately, but it brought home to me very vividly that philosophy at that time had an extremely intolerant side, opposed to academic freedom, which I thoroughly disapproved of.

You mentioned Judith Butler’s book, Gender Trouble. Your book is called Trouble with Gender. Is that a deliberate allusion?

Yes. It is also an allusion to Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham, the British science fiction writer.

You talk about the trouble that Tuvel’s paper caused in academic philosophy. When I was at Oxford in the 2000s, the Philosophy Faculty had a reputation for competitive, no-holds-barred debate. From what I have heard, that was true of many philosophy departments at the time. Is it still the case today? Is frank discussion still possible in university philosophy departments?

Yes, it certainly is, although I think that, over the years, that style of open combat and trying to tear the speaker down has changed. Back in the day, when an invited speaker came to deliver a talk at a colloquium, the attitude of some philosophers was, ‘We have to go into the talk with the aim of humiliating the speaker or destroying his or her ideas, and if we do that, then that is a satisfactory colloquium session.’ Sometimes philosophers went too far in that regard, and the result was that the discipline was less hospitable and welcoming to some people than it should have been.

Now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction: the emphasis is much more on constructive criticism and telling the speaker that his or her paper was excellent and incisive and a great contribution to the topic at hand. There is much more overt praising of speakers at the end of talks than there used to be. And as far as hot-button topics like sex and gender go, unfortunately it is not possible to have a freewheeling discussion without some people getting offended or hurt. As a result, we do not have no-holds-barred discussions about what women are or whether sex is binary.

This timidity came as something of a surprise to me. Philosophers talk a big game. They say, ‘Oh, of course, nothing’s off the table. We philosophers question our most deeply held assumptions. Some of what we say might be very disconcerting or upsetting. You just won’t have any firm ground to stand on after the philosopher has done her work and convinced you that you don’t even know that you have two hands. After all, you might be the victim of an evil demon or be a hapless brain in a vat.’

But when the chips are down, the philosophers turn out to have been bluffing. When there is the real prospect of being socially shamed or ostracised by their peers for questioning orthodoxy, many philosophers do not have the stomach for it.

In your experience, is that true on both sides of the Atlantic?

Yes.

Apart from the trans or gender debate, are there any other issues that cause this amount of friction?

At the moment it is mainly sex and gender. Race is another topic with plenty of no-go zones, in philosophy and elsewhere. Interestingly, in the subdiscipline called the philosophy of race, it is perfectly acceptable to argue for a biological theory of race – that what it is to be black or east Asian or white is to have a certain kind of ancient ancestry, a pure matter of biology, in some broad sense. 

Why is it that this issue of what a person is, or rather, what a woman is, has become such a huge bone of contention among so many people?

That is a good question. I am not sure what the answer is. The question, what is a woman, was asked most famously by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949). And feminist philosophers have been obsessed with the question ever since. But it has never before had the valence that it has now. I suspect that part of the explanation is that in the UK, for example, organisations like Stonewall started hanging their hat on the slogan that ‘trans women are women’. If they had said instead, ‘trans women are trans women’, or ‘trans women deserve to be treated as women’, there is no reason why the issue of what a woman is would have become so contentious. It is quite surreal the way the ‘what is a woman’ question is now used as a kind of ‘gotcha’ question to ask politicians.

In response to this question, for instance, Keir Starmer, the current Labour leader, said in 2021 that it was ‘not right’ to say that only women have a cervix. Then in March this year, he said that, ‘For 99.9 per cent of women, it is completely biological … and of course they haven’t got a penis.’ Finally, in July, he decided that a woman is an ‘adult female’. And as you point out in your book, ‘woman’ was Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2022. Is there a sort of fixation on this question? Why is it always about women?

Of course it is ‘what is a woman?’ – rather than ‘what is a man?’ Not because the ‘woman’ version of the question is harder to answer, but because issues of access to various spaces – sporting competitions, prisons, shelters and so on – are really only an issue for women; there is not a corresponding issue for men. Generally speaking, men could not give a fig about whether trans men are included in men-only sporting contests or use men’s changing rooms or are in the male prison estate. In fact, I think most trans men would very wisely choose to be in the female estate rather than the male estate.

This is one of those rare examples, like the Beatles, where the direction of cultural export goes from the UK to the US. The ‘adult human female’ slogan started in the UK, in 2018, when the infamous billboard went up that quoted the then Google dictionary definition: ‘Woman, wʊmən, noun, adult human female’.

It was only some years later that this made its way over the Atlantic, when Matt Walsh, a conservative commentator who is very popular over here, made a documentary called What is a Woman? The answer that Walsh’s wife gives at the end of the documentary is that a woman is an ‘adult human female’. To get to that rather unexciting point, Walsh interviewed many experts – including, memorably, a gender studies professor – who were completely unable to answer the question coherently.

To sum up, what is really at the heart of the trans debate? What exactly is it about?

That is a good question. There are specific questions or specific issues that divide the so-called gender-critical side from the trans-activist side. One question is about the nature of women and men. What is it to be a woman or a man? Another question is about the nature of sex. Are there two sexes or more than two? Or is sex in some sense socially constructed? Is the notion of sex in good order anyway? Maybe it should be completely junked. And another question is about gender identity. Do we all have gender identities? And is a misaligned gender identity the explanation of why some people suffer distress at their sexed bodies?

There are all these specific issues which are hotly debated. And then, of course, there is the even more contentious issue of how to treat children and adolescents with gender dysphoria – whether to give some of them puberty blockers, for example.

But beyond listing these questions, it is not clear to me that there is some sort of overarching issue which is really what the whole trans debate is about. Everyone sensible in this debate thinks that trans people should be afforded the same dignity and rights as everyone else. They should not be discriminated against, they should receive proper health care, they should be treated with respect in day-to-day life just like their fellow citizens, and if some adults wish to transition, they should be able to.

Is the struggle for trans rights analogous to the historic struggle for gay rights?

No, it is not, because there is no particular right being demanded that trans people lack.

Are there points at which women’s rights and trans rights, whatever these are, will inevitably clash, or do you think there is a way of reconciling them?

I would not put it in terms of a clash of rights, but there certainly are points of conflict. The most obvious of these is in sports. If you are a trans woman and you live your life as a woman and are treated by most people as a woman, it is at least understandable that you would wish to join the women’s team or take part in women’s sporting competitions. On the other side, women have an interest in having female-only categories for many sports. So there is a clear conflict of interest there. Another clear conflict of interest is in the case of prisons.

Let’s talk about your book in a bit more detail. In the ‘acknowledgements’ section, you say your greatest debt is to your wife, Carole Hooven, who was a lecturer on human evolutionary biology at Harvard. In 2021, she published T, which was a popular science book about testosterone. Last year, she wrote an article describing how she was accused of transphobia by certain members of Harvard for explaining on Fox News that sex is binary and biological. To what extent have your wife’s experiences influenced your own interest in the trans (or gender) debate and your views about it?

As a result of the episode you mention, Carole is no longer a lecturer in human evolutionary biology at Harvard. She has a position as an associate in the psychology department, in Steven Pinker’s lab. When this whole affair snowballed, it became apparent that it was not feasible for her to continue teaching in her old department. So she left. Carole’s experiences influenced the book a great deal. In addition to witnessing the backlash against Rebecca Tuvel, Kathleen Stock and other philosophers like Holly Lawford-Smith, I got a ringside seat when it came to Carole’s own cancellation over sex and gender.

That experience made me more determined to write a book on the topic. It is not that I am a particularly courageous person, but it did seem to be extremely unchivalrous to stand by and do nothing when I knew that I had things to say. And many philosophers were promulgating various confusions and mistakes which, I thought, I was in a position to correct.

Where would you put yourself politically?

I am a boring centrist. I have no political affiliation to speak of. I have always voted Democrat in the US. Temperamentally, I think I would really like to be a conservative, but I have never found an intellectually satisfactory way of being one. Socially, I have liberal views of the sort held by most academics.

In your introduction to Trouble with Gender, you write that your book is not about the ‘vitriolic political issues’ associated with the trans debate. Nonetheless, it was refused publication by Oxford University Press, after previously having been accepted. Why do you think OUP refused to publish your book in the end?

This is speculation on my part, but it is worth looking at the immediate history, in particular the fuss over Holly Lawford-Smith’s book Gender Critical Feminism, also published by Oxford University Press. Announcement of its publication produced two petitions of complaint. As I discussed in Quillette, one of these was signed by the OUP Guild (the union representing OUP staff in New York). The other was signed by ‘members of the international scholarly community with a relationship of some kind, or several kinds, to Oxford University Press’. The letters protested against the publication of Lawford-Smith’s book and told OUP to change its procedures so this sort of thing would never happen again.

As for my book, it is not as if OUP should have been surprised by what I actually produced, because I wrote a proposal, eagerly accepted at first, which accurately described the final manuscript. OUP’s single formal complaint against the book, namely that it did not treat the subject in ‘a sufficiently serious or respectful way’, is ludicrous. At least, I hope that readers will find it ludicrous.

Do you think that OUP’s response to your book is a symptom of the way things are going in academia at the moment? Is there a cowardice and an unwillingness to deal with arguments that challenge a particularly entrenched view about things?

Yes, for sure. It is a worrying trend. It is the same phenomenon as the philosophers who talk the talk but do not walk the walk. To put it another way, when academic publishing is subjected to a genuine stress test, it completely fails, even though the advertising beforehand was that it would work perfectly. OUP publishes all sorts of controversial philosophy books, which defend views that other philosophers think are ridiculous, misguided, or completely wrong. Often, in the pages of OUP philosophy books, the author will criticise other philosophers in the most uncompromising terms. It also happens that OUP philosophy books are reviewed by other philosophers in an extremely critical way.

So you might think that OUP would gladly publish a book on a hot topic like sex and gender – maybe that book would get trashed by other philosophers, but this is just the way of academic publishing, and nothing to be ashamed of. That is not what happened.

Your book is designed for a popular rather than an academic audience. Did you intend it to stir up controversy or make inflammatory claims?

No. I knew that some of the claims would be controversial. For example, there is a chapter in which the view that women are adult human females is defended. There is a chapter on sex which defends the orthodox view of what sex is and tries to expose various confusions surrounding this topic. There is a chapter which argues that gender identity, at least as people popularly conceive of it, is a myth. All these are inflammatory claims, but I did not intend to provoke or stir up controversy. No doubt I will, though. The book has eight chapters, and each one will annoy some people.

What does your book contribute to the trans debate that has not been said before?

It is a very different book from, say, Helen Joyce’s Trans or Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls. It deliberately does not take a stand on any social and political issues. It is not written from a feminist or gender critical perspective. It just brings the tools of philosophy to bear on the questions that everyone seems to be asking these days and tries to sort things out. The fact that it is not about social and political issues gives me more room to treat these topics in the detail that they deserve.

I would regard it as a success if readers discovered how you can actually argue about these issues. They do not even have to have to agree with what I say; they just have to see how evidence and argument can be brought to bear on questions like, ‘what is a woman?’ or ‘does everyone have a gender identity?’ Normally, in public discussions of these issues, people do not really argue, in the sense that one side presents evidence and reasons and then the other side counters or presents their own evidence and reasons. They start shouting at each other instead.

What can a philosopher specifically contribute to a debate about sex and gender? Should it not be left to the biologists and psychologists?

I hope that my book demonstrates exactly what a philosopher can bring to the table. Philosophers are good at making crucial distinctions, being relatively clear and precise, and being able to set out arguments in the appropriate way, so that you see why the conclusion follows from the premises. It is not possible to master all academic disciplines in one life, so we need contributions from different specialists. That includes the biologists and the psychologists, but sometimes their discussions of these topics are flawed because they lack a crucial tool from the philosophical toolkit. But it must be admitted that philosophers also have their blind spots and weaknesses.

You observe in your book that ‘a concerning feature of debates around sex and gender is the attempt to prevent distinctions from being made by prohibiting or redefining certain words.’ How far would you argue that sex and gender should be distinguished, and why?

In one way sex and gender should not be distinguished at all, because one of the many senses of the word ‘gender’ is simply ‘sex’. That is, ‘gender’ is sometimes just a synonym for ‘sex’; in this sense, sex and gender are the same. Because ‘gender’ has many other meanings, and to avoid confusion, I think it would be a good idea only to use the word ‘gender’ to mean sex. That is my first point.

My second point is that there are all these other things which we definitely want to distinguish from sex. For example, we want to distinguish being male from being masculine. Everyone going back to the ancient Greeks has seen that there is a distinction here. You can be a feminine male or a masculine female, and one sense of ‘gender’ is as a label for masculinity and femininity. We need to distinguish being male from being masculine, but there is absolutely no reason to use the word ‘gender’ to mark that distinction.

Another distinction we would want to make is that between being female and being a woman. There are numerous females who are neither humans nor adults, so there are females who are not women. On anyone’s view, there is a distinction here. You should not identify being female with being a woman, even if you think that all women are female. Now another sense of ‘gender’ is as a label for the categories man, woman, boy, girl. But again, it is a terrible idea to use the word ‘gender’ to mark this distinction between being female and being a woman.

Another distinction is between being female and having a female gender identity. Assuming we can make sense of the notion of ‘gender identity’ in the first place, we need to distinguish between being female and having a female gender identity, because some males can have a female gender identity, for example. Yet another sense of ‘gender’ is ‘gender identity’. But yet again, it is a bad idea to use the single word ‘gender’ to mark the distinction: we already have the phrase ‘gender identity’ and we should use that instead.

It is sometimes argued that the claim that trans people cannot change gender is incompatible with a humane (or humanist) outlook. Or that to require trans people to live in the sex which they are ‘assigned’ at birth, rather than accepting that they can change, is contrary to their human rights. Therefore, it is argued, to be ‘gender critical’ is fundamentally a right-wing, if not extremist, position, and harsh and oppressive to trans people. What would you say in response to this line of argument?

I am not a gender critical feminist, but it is not part of their position that people should not transition. And if people do transition, it is not part of the gender critical position that they should be discriminated against or their human rights should be reduced or downgraded. If you think of transitioning as it was always thought of, as a palliative measure to deal with gender dysphoria, then assuming that this actually works, at least for some people, it is hard to see what objection there could be to it, because it is an effective medical procedure to deal with a troubling psychological condition. It is not that people transition just for the hell of it or to gain access to women’s spaces. They transition because life has become unbearable living as their natal gender or natal sex.

Like many people on the side of free speech in debates of this kind, you quote from George Orwell’s 1984 in your book. You choose the part where Syme, a worker on the Newspeak dictionary, says,

‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words … Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.’

In your view, how far is the whole of the trans debate – or gender debate – really a battle about words?

In one way, it is not about words at all. Take the question of what a woman is. That question is not about the word ‘woman’, although of course I have asked it using the word ‘woman’. I am interested in people of a certain kind, women, not in any English words.

But in another way the trans debate is about words. Various trans activist projects concern language: if you can stop people from using various words or get them to use other words or phrases instead, then the various distinctions that the activists do not want to be made, become a lot harder to make. One example of this is the frequent replacement of ‘sex’ with ‘sex assigned at birth’. If you want to get people to stop talking about the fact that we come in male and female varieties, then one excellent way of doing it is to try and enforce a rule where you never say that someone is ‘female’, but instead that she was ‘assigned female at birth’. This has the effect of suggesting that people’s sex is a matter of some doubt or speculation – that maybe no one really knows what sex people are.

Similarly, for expressions like ‘cervix havers’ or ‘uterus havers’ – if you want to avoid the suggestion that any adult female person is a woman, then substituting ‘uterus haver’ for ‘woman’ is an effective way of doing that. Language is extremely important if you are an activist – for the reason that Orwell identified in that quotation.

Do you think that philosophers have a duty to defend words against their destruction?

They have a duty to defend established ways of making valuable distinctions. One very valuable distinction is between males and females. To the extent that people are trying to prevent others from making that distinction, philosophers, I suppose, should step in and say, ‘no, stop, that’s a bad idea’. But that is not to say that anyone will listen to us.

In your experience of academia in the US and elsewhere, how far would you say that free and open enquiry and debate are under threat in today’s environment? 

We are going through a bad patch – I do not think there is any doubt about that. But the pendulum will swing back sooner or later. There are already many signs of pushback; books seem to be coming out all the time explaining what went wrong and how we can correct things. I have a book that just came out called The Identity Trap by the Johns Hopkins political scientist Yascha Mounk, all about the origins of so-called ‘wokeness’ – which is of course closely connected to this present cultural moment and the enthusiasm for cancelling speakers and shutting down certain kinds of speech.

So there is already some momentum in the other direction, and, if history is any guide, these things come in waves and recede eventually. But that does not mean that we should just sit back and do nothing.

Do you hope that your book will help to push the pendulum back in the other direction?

I hope that in a very small way it will widen the Overton window and broaden boundaries of acceptable speech to some extent – whether people agree with the conclusions or not.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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On academic freedom, see further:

British Islam and the crisis of ‘wokeism’ in universities – interview with Steven Greer

Free speech at universities: where do we go from here? by Julius Weinberg

And on the trans debate:

‘A godless neo-religion’ – interview with Helen Joyce

‘The falsehood at the heart of the trans movement’, by Eliza Mondegreen

The post ‘When the chips are down, the philosophers turn out to have been bluffing’ appeared first on The Freethinker.

In June 1643, amidst the furnace heat of civil war, Parliament issued a prohibition of unlicensed publications. This Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing rescinded freedoms that had existed since the abolition of the Star Chamber, a judicial court notorious for its abuses of power, in 1641. For two years, the unlicensed presses had churned opinion, controversy and fringe views, uninhibited by government censorship. ‘Licence’ is a complex word that points to the difficult relationship between individual and collective freedoms. It derives from the Latin licentia, which in turn is related to licet, ‘it is permitted’, but also licens, meaning ‘bold’ and ‘unrestrained’. When we drive with a licence, we are permitted a freedom by law. But if we drive licentiously, or without due restraint, we may find our freedoms legitimately encroached upon. Some liberties are granted for obedience, others are assumed by the individual regardless of established legal or social norms. In 1643, individual liberty of expression was curbed as State concern about licence in the public sphere led to the return of licensing. Those who printed without permission, or without giving an author’s name, risked having their books burnt and being sent to prison. Admittedly, this was preferable to being burnt as well as your books, which could happen under the Inquisition, and did, in some Catholic countries, through to the nineteenth century.

John Milton, now best known as the poet of Paradise Lost – itself a profound meditation on obedience and its limits – objected to the return of licensing. Why, he asked, fight to overthrow the tyranny of unrestrained monarchy and drain the cesspit of the Star Chamber, if only to usher back its spirit of control? This is the question that motivates his great prose work Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament [sic] of England, which was published towards the end of 1644, when he was 36 and already a well-known writer. True to his principles, and characteristically defiant, Milton gave his name, but published without a licence. He spoke with his actions as well as his words. Laws, he believed, could be defied where they conflicted with a strictly examined conscience. In Milton’s double revolutionary context, the importance of this cannot be overstated. The Protestant Reformation hinged on the belief that God’s light shone from within; it was not received via the external authority of Popes and bishops. Milton was also at war, in words at least, with a monarchy that, in his view, aped popish ceremony and dictatorial presumption. Absolute authority, Milton believed, exists only in heaven. Disobedience may have been disastrous for Satan and his fallen angels, and it did not work out well for Adam and Eve, but it was very much on the table for the freethinker in seventeenth-century England.

Milton had also published, the previous year, anonymously and without a licence, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: Restor’d to the Good of Both Sexes, From the Bondage of Canon Law, a radical (for the time) argument that divorce, then allowed only in very limited circumstances, should be possible simply on the basis of incompatibility between man and wife. This outraged the clergy, who saw it as promoting sexual licence. Milton’s tract was first published on 1st August 1643; the Ordinance for the Regulation of Printing had come into force in June. His tract was mentioned with disgust in Parliament by those arguing for censorship. Herbert Palmer, a Puritan clergyman, read a sermon to Parliament in 1644, stating that Milton deserved to be burnt for this tract.

If Milton broke actual laws by publishing Areopagitica, there is also something unruly about the form and manner of his work. He calls it a ‘speech’, addressed ‘to the Parlament of England’. But Areopagitica is not a speech – it is too long and rhetorically demanding for such purposes – and it was not given in Parliament, a forum where Milton had no licence to speak. Areopagitica first appeared in the more lowly form of a pamphlet – a transitory, rough and ready articulation, another bundle of pages in a Babel of public print.

Milton was provoking questions about the right to be heard but also, crucially, about authority. At this point, he had little licensed authority himself and was viewed in some quarters as a crackpot. His authority is thus assumed, with a verve that borders on arrogance; it is grounded in his deep learning, in the evident power of his intellect, and in the brilliance of his literary skills. He also possessed a deep conviction that truth was on his side and that truth, in the end, would shine through.

Any revolutionary power base, the thing Parliament was becoming, begins as a challenge to existing authority, in this case, to the ‘divine right’ assumed by Charles I. The very logic of such a power base, that of dissent, entails the prospect of its own undoing at the hands of the next stage of the revolution. This is the toothpaste that Edmund Burke tried to put back in the tube after 1688, arguing for a monarchical reset based on limited powers and a flavour of mystique. Arguing from the French revolutionaries’ descent to government by guillotine, he proposed a pragmatic status quo based on an aesthetically pleasing but disempowered hereditary monarch. Authority is necessary, but it cannot operate without a foundation or generally accepted centre. Burke believed that the jewels, golden coaches, and ceremony of monarchy provided exactly this.

Milton would have hated any such idea as a very real hell on earth, as a sagging and cynical crypto-papist State. He believed that authority must rest on the consent of individual reason as it works towards the discovery of truth. And golden coaches were of no use for this journey. To him, all people were part of God’s creation, endued with a conscience and a reasoning capacity to distinguish right from wrong. They were able to make their own decisions about how they should be ruled. They were not sheep to be tricked into the fold, distracted by glittering gewgaws. To the Christian fundamentalist, the answer was simple: to hold up the Bible as the answer to all questions. But Milton was too well-educated to think of Scripture as a set of rules. He knew it for what it is, a linguistic and textual smorgasbord, full of symbols, allegories, parables and poetry. It required educated and judicious interpretation, and it is this process, rather than static diktat, on which true authority must be based. A ruler justifies his authority, writes Milton, when his ‘prudent spirit acknowledges and obeys the voice of reason from what quarter soever it be heard speaking’. The key phrase here is ‘what quarter soever’; we must be ready to hear all rational voices, to plunge into the ocean of opinion in order to become expert swimmers. Those who write with evil intent, to promote popery and undermine the commonwealth, must be identified and stopped; complete freedom of speech has never been entertained by the wise. But those who are simply misguided, or plain wrong, must be allowed their say, even where – especially where – it conflicts with current official views. This is not some TalkRadio idea of ‘free speech’: ignorant people should not be taken seriously on subjects where their authority is based on nothing more than easily swayed emotion. It is to recognise that, in our fallen world, it requires great skill to extract truth from the vast deserts of error and evil that surround us. Licensing, Milton argues, will blunt our capacity for critical thought, leaving us vulnerable to seductive but dangerous words. Censorship, he writes,

‘will be primely to the discouragement of all learning and the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that might be yet further made both in religious and civil wisdom.’

Given that some parliamentarians had been mutilated for expressing their beliefs (William Prynne, for example, had his ears ‘cropped’), Milton’s language could not be more immediate. For him, a lack of ears symbolised an urgent duty to listen. Authority should not be hereditary; it must be earned through hard work, and that work is the work of the mind, of knowing the world, and of knowing the minds of others through their words. Not the abstractions of the ivory tower, but working things through while embattled on all sides by contending voices:  

‘I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.’

The price of free thought for Milton was a moral obligation to go to war amidst words, to be a soldier in the cause of truth and collective prosperity. Those who silence voices will never keep the world pure. Their licence to remove the liberty of others will simply cheapen virtue by attaching it to the dubious privilege of an unexamined and unenquiring life.

For a bibliography of our articles on free speech and free thought, see: Free Speech in the Freethinker.

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By Western ideological standards, Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former Roman Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong, would hardly be considered a progressive. On social issues, he has previously opposed legislation extending anti-domestic violence laws to same-sex couples. On liturgical matters, he is a staunch defender of the pre-Second Vatican Council Tridentine Latin mass. At the level of Vatican ecclesiastical politics, he pals around with the likes of the late Cardinal George Pell, who aside from being doctrinally conservative, was also implicated in shielding paedophile priests in Australia.

At the other end of the spectrum is the Hong Kong pop singer, Denise Ho. So outspoken has she been about LGBT rights, at least by Asian standards, that she was once banned from performing in Malaysia over her LGBT identity. She has campaigned for gay marriage rights in Hong Kong. She once said, ‘[w]e can be openly gay as someone else can be Christian or Muslim,’ seemingly implying that homosexual and religious identities are mutually exclusive.

If Zen and Ho were in the West instead of in Hong Kong, it is likely that they would have nothing to do with one another except as adversaries. For many decades now, self-declared ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’ in the West have fought never-ending culture wars over various social and identity-related issues. These include religion, rights related to sexual orientation and identity, reproductive rights, race, language, national identity (in the UK’s case, this is particularly apparent in relation to Europe) – you name it.

Political and culture-war affiliations in the West are linked increasingly with social as opposed to economic identities. Particularly in places like places like the United States and Australia, the traditional alliance between secular progressives and religious voters from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and those who emphasise economic justice over issues of personal morality, is unravelling. Centre-left political alliances have attracted less religious support.

But Zen and Ho are not in the West. Far from falling in with Western culture war faultlines, they have made common cause in the fight for democracy and autonomy in Hong Kong. Zen is an old warrior on this front, having been involved as early as 2003 in backing mass protests against China’s first, aborted attempt to impose national security laws on Hong Kong. In addition to her LGBT rights advocacy, Denise Ho became identified with Hong Kong’s democracy movement when she openly supported Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, which involved mass protests for genuine universal suffrage.

Then came the protests of 2019. What started as mass protests against the Hong Kong government’s proposed legislation allowing for extradition to China expanded to a full-blown resistance movement for democracy and against authoritarian police brutality. As the period of the protests lengthened from days to weeks to months, the number of protesters being arrested mounted. From the outset, organisations were set up to provide various forms of assistance to those hurt or arrested by Hong Kong’s increasingly authoritarian regime.

Once such organisation was the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which was named after the date (12 June) of the first major episode of indiscriminate police brutality during the 2019 protests. According to its website, the fund provided ‘humanitarian and relevant financial support to persons who are injured, arrested, attacked or threatened with violence’; the support provided was primarily ‘legal, medical, psychological and emergency financial assistance’.

The fund was overseen by a board of trustees. Its members included Joseph Zen and Denise Ho. The fact that Zen and Ho were, by Western standards, ideological opposites on culture wars issues, did not appear to be a problem for them in co-operating on the cause of democracy in Hong Kong and resistance to authoritarian violence. In overseeing the fund, they stood together, they were arrested together, and they were convicted together.  

In the democracy movement, and the resistance to China’s authoritarian overreach in a Hong Kong that had been promised at least 50 years of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ as part of the deal in China’s resumption of sovereignty, Zen and Ho’s co-operation was not unique. Benny Tai, the initiator of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, is a devout Christian who contributed to a Chinese language anti-LGBT rights book. Yet he is currently on trial under Hong Kong’s National Security Law with LGBT rights figures such as Ray Chan and Jimmy Sham for their joint involvement in a 2020 informal primary election.

The well-known, and now also jailed, Hong Kong democracy activist, Joshua Wong, had his run-ins with his socially conservative father. Yet his father was also the one who inculcated pro-democracy ideas into him from a young age (link in Chinese), and was highly supportive of his activism. And prior to its disbandment in 2021, an umbrella organisation called the Civil Human Rights Front organised many of Hong Kong’s largest protests in favour of democracy and against the erosion of human rights. Its member organisations include a diverse assortment of religious, feminist and LGBT rights groups, as well as political parties and anti-Communist trade unions.

So what kept Zen, Ho and these various groups, whose views on issues in the Western culture wars varied wildly, working together, right up until the point when China imposed a draconian National Security Law on Hong Kong in July 2020 to crack down upon resistance? This is a question that has not really been discussed and analysed within Hong Kong itself. It was as if the fact of co-operation between these individuals and groups to resist China’s authoritarian overreach was taken as a given. Nobody made a big deal about any ‘cross-ideological grand alliances’. And yet, on further reflection, whether conceptually or as a matter of factual circumstances, these people’s and groups’ decision to put aside the culture wars and face a greater adversary together as one makes sense.

Conceptually speaking, in order to have a culture war, one needs an environment that tolerates it. This would involve the existence of, or even respect for, freedom of speech, assembly, association and conscience, as well as a democratic government obliged to take account of the strength in numbers that culture warriors claim to represent. But when these basic freedoms are under threat and are undermined by an authoritarian government, everyone, no matter what his or her opinions, is at risk. It therefore made sense for those with ideological differences in Hong Kong to work together to resist authoritarian attempts to silence them all.

The campaigners’ concerns about being silenced are justified by the facts. China has a track record of cracking down on civil society groups of all stripes. It has cracked down on both Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as on Uyghur and Hui Muslims. It has cracked down on LGBT advocacy groups. It has cracked down on civil society generally to the point of collapse. And in the case of Hong Kong, the fears of being silenced were realised. Since China’s full-scale crackdown against the city started in 2020, at least 58 civil society groups have folded, and those that remain have become muted.

China’s programme of cracking down on diversity of opinion and dissent does not stop at its own borders. It seeks to silence dissidents living abroad with surveillance and threats. Its ‘United Front’ operations in the West are little more than influence, interference and infiltration operations designed to undermine democratic processes. Its intimidation tactics have in the last year or two started escalating to the point of going after families of popularly elected Members of Parliament who have been critics of China. This has happened in places such as Britain (creating obstacles to the university applications of Iain Duncan-Smith’s children) and Canada (attempts at intimidating the family of Michael Chong MP). 

Despite the real threat that China presents to the West’s relatively free and democratic way of life, many participants in Western public debates remain consumed by their obsession with the culture wars. If anything, the tenor of the disputes appears to have deteriorated since around the mid-2010s, coinciding with the onset of Trumpism and, in the UK, the Brexit movement. What had once at least been relatively reasoned if ideological arguments over controversial issues has now descended into puerile name-calling, with terms like ‘woke’, ‘fascist’ and ‘TERF’ being bandied about almost at random. And on the question of the threat posed by China, ideological cultural warriors have used it either to go down the ethno-nationalist ‘yellow peril’ path (eg ban all overseas students from China) or to engage in insidious anti-Western whataboutery (eg dismissing atrocities against Uyghurs because Australia treated its indigenous people poorly).

These exacerbated divisions and name-calling merely play into China’s hands. Moreover, the continuation and intensification of the Western culture wars has in itself taken an authoritarian turn, in which both sides manifest a lack of tolerance and respect for opposing viewpoints. The way the China issue has played out in the context of the culture wars, with the two sides as usual adopting equally extreme positions – either in support of a racialised approach in dealing with China or in defence of its authoritarianism – is but a case in point.

This is fertile ground for China to push its anti-democratic agenda beyond its borders, such as through disinformation campaigns. The West’s ability to resist is weakened by its own internal obsessions and intolerances. And while China cannot necessarily impose itself on the West as quickly or as directly as it has done in Hong Kong, it has shown itself capable of establishing firm footholds and exercising control over apparently democratic processes. Take, for example, China’s secret funding and compromising of candidates for elected office in Canada, its disinformation campaigns about the political system in Australia, its illegal funnelling of political donations to both major parties in New Zealand, and its suppression of Hong Kong dissident protests in the UK. Activities such as these are stepping stones towards displacing the Western liberal democracy-based world order led by the US, and replacing it with a China-led authoritarian world.

There is a real risk that by the time the bickering cultural warriors realise that their freedoms and rights are being undermined by a greater force, it could be too late.

This is where the examples of Joseph Zen, Denise Ho, Benny Tai, Ray Chan, Jimmy Sham, Joshua Wong and his father, and various ideologically diverse groups in the now-defunct Hong Kong Civil Human Rights Front, are instructive for the West. Of course, it may be said that despite their refraining from fighting culture wars and standing in solidarity in resisting authoritarian China, they have suffered setback after setback. What is the point of cross-ideological solidarity if it makes no difference in the end?

Except it very probably did make a difference. China’s push to erode and ultimate destroy Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms did not just start in 2019. It had been taking place for many years under the radar, even at local community levels. By putting culture wars to one side in the face of a common threat, pro-democracy Hong Kong activists and groups with divergent views on social issues played an important role in holding the line against China, until the dam broke upon the state’s full-scale crackdown in 2020. This crackdown has been all-encompassing, ranging from mass arrests and the jailing of dissidents, to the dismantling of civil society groups, education curricula and electoral systems, to the removal of politically sensitive books from libraries, to the general silencing of all criticism of authority by ordinary people.

Hong Kong is under China’s sovereignty and is ultimately subject to its authoritarian whims. The odds were therefore stacked against Hongkongers even though they were relatively united. The situation is different for Western democracies, where China needs more time and must use less direct methods to gain influence.

Where those engaged in socio-political discourse in the West are willing to set aside their internal differences to resist China’s efforts, they stand a much better chance at keeping China’s creeping authoritarianism at bay than Hongkongers ever had. In contrast, however, for Western democratic societies that choose to continue to allow themselves to be consumed by the culture wars, China’s efforts to undermine and, potentially, control them will be left relatively unopposed. The West’s inward-looking obsession with the culture wars, or just inertia, has, for example, enabled the Chinese government to open up secret police stations in many Western countries to facilitate the intimidating of its critics there. It is only in the last year or so that they are being discovered and gradually looked into by Western governments.

For those in the West who are caught up in arguing ceaselessly about their ideological differences, trying to set all that aside and work together to resist a more nefarious force may appear difficult. But the likes of Joseph Zen and Denise Ho have shown that it can and should be done. Internal squabbles may be a tolerable or even acceptable part of political discourse when democratic ways of life are not under threat. However, they become a luxury that one can ill afford when the distraction they afford opens the door for authoritarian encroachment.

As China becomes increasingly assertive in imposing its influence and control around the world, it is high time for the voices on both sides of the culture wars to lay aside their differences and give solidarity a chance. Hong Kong has shown the world how, even in the most difficult of circumstances, solidarity between erstwhile adversaries matters when confronted by an authoritarian giant. If Hongkongers can do it, then so can those in the West.

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The trial of Ashfaq Masih will mean little to people in Britain today. It could be suggested that it means even less in Pakistan, where his alleged crime took place. Masih was a Pentecostal Christian who owned a bicycle repair shop in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province in eastern Pakistan. In 2017, he was arrested following an oral disagreement with a Muslim customer after the latter refused to pay his bill. The man in question, Muhammad Irfan, told Masih not to charge him for the repair to his bicycle as he was a devout Muslim. Masih refused, supposedly telling Irfan that Christ was the true prophet. His lawyer, Riaz Anjum, told Morning Star News, ‘Masih rejected his request, saying he only followed Jesus and wasn’t interested in Irfan’s religious statutes as a Muslim.’ The police charged the 31-year-old with disrespecting the prophet Mohammed. He was to spend the next five years in prison awaiting trial.

When he appeared in court, Masih testified that he had been deceived by the shop owner, Muhammad Ashfaq, and the businessman Muhammad Naveed, who owned a nearby bicycle repair shop. Masih told the court in Lahore that Naveed was jealous of his success and had conspired with Ashfaq to destroy his business. The case was riddled with errors. Irfan, who was the primary witness, failed to show up to court to testify, while according to Masih’s lawyer, statements from other witnesses ‘were contradictory’.

Despite a clear lack of evidence against him, Judge Khalid Wazir sentenced the now 36-year-old to death. On July 4, 2022, Masih was sentenced to death by hanging.*

The tragic case of Masih is no outlier. As reported in Morning Star News, between October 2020 and September 2021, 620 people were murdered in Pakistan for their beliefs. The country ranks second behind Nigeria for the number of Christians killed for their religion. 

Blasphemy, defined as speaking or acting in a way that is critical of or offensive to God, is still prevalent in four out of ten countries in the world. According to an analysis conducted by the Pew Research Centre, of the 198 countries and territories they studied, 79 criminalised blasphemy. Among these, penalties ranged from fines to prison sentences and public lashings.

While this research found blasphemy laws on the statute books on all five continents, the region where these laws were most commonly located was the Middle East and Africa, where 90 percent of the 20 countries studied had laws criminalising blasphemy. It is here that the penalties for blasphemy carry the severest punishments. It is predominantly countries in this region—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia—that carry the death sentence for blasphemy. 

Britain has officially abolished blasphemy laws—except, it seems, as far as concerns one religion, Islam. I found myself thinking about Masih recently as details of an incident at Wakefield began to emerge. In February, four boys were suspended from Kettlethorpe High School after slightly damaging a copy of the Quran. Rumours were spread—notably by the Labour councillor Usman Ali—that the holy book had been ‘desecrated’. In truth, the book was lightly scuffed, suffering minor damage to the front cover. Still, to placate a vocal minority of Muslim reactionaries, the police were called, and it was recorded as a non-crime hate incident. The 14-year-old autistic boy who had brought it into the West Yorkshire school on a dare was deluged with death threats. It led to his mother effectively begging the local mosque for forgiveness; to complete this shameful act of submission, she was required to cover her hair.   

Just a few miles away from Kettlethorpe is another West Yorkshire school, Batley Grammar, the scene of another moral panic over blasphemy two years ago. It was here that a religious studies teacher was forced to go into hiding after showing his students cartoons of Mohammed during a class about free speech. Once again, religious fundamentalists got involved and showed up outside the school’s gates, causing it to shut down for days. A local Islamic charity, Purpose of Life, published his name online. The Yorkshire Examiner reported that the teacher sought police protection after receiving numerous death threats. To this day, the teacher is said to be in hiding. 

In modern Western society, no one should be prosecuted for blasphemy. Using the threat of imprisonment or death to criticise an idea is the very definition of tyranny. This archaic legislation is like something out of medieval times—or the Old Testament, as it is appropriately called. Unfortunately, incidents like Wakefield are not a new phenomenon. Britain has been heading in an illiberal direction for years. 

The seeds of surrender to Islamist intolerance were first sown 30 years ago with the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. The book’s perceived blasphemy led Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa, effectively condemning the author to death, in 1989; last summer, a New York assailant came disturbingly close to claiming the bounty set on Rushdie’s head. It is worth recalling that the first protest against The Satanic Verses happened not in the streets of Peshawar or across the Middle East, but in Bolton on 2nd December 1988. 

Incidents like this, with their associated threats of violence, arguably show that Islam must be treated differently from other religions. If the UK yields to the demands of religious extremists, it will be sanctioning the spread of a de facto blasphemy law. Freedom of expression and religion are essential in a free and liberal society. The freedom to criticise, question, mock and insult a religion is as important as the freedom of its adherents to practise it. 

Offence can act as a catalyst for social change. In 1976, Denis Lemon, the editor of Gay News, was put on trial for blasphemy for publishing a homoerotic poem about the death of Jesus Christ. The poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares To Speak its Name, was included in issue 96 of Gay News and depicted a Roman centurion fantasising about having sex with Christ’s crucified body. Lemon’s subsequent conviction started a debate about blasphemy laws, eventually leading to their abolition in 2008 and expanding freedom of speech for all of us.  

In contrast, since the Masih case, Pakistan has legislated for even stricter controls on blasphemy laws. In January, its National Assembly passed the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act 2023, increasing the power of the state to impose even more draconian punishments and widening the definition of blasphemy to include insulting figures connected to Mohammed. 

Time will tell if Pakistan will row back on its antiquated constitution. In the meantime, there is much to be done in Britain. Much of the blame has to lie with the moral cowardice of modern-day progressives, who are unwilling to confront religious authoritarianism and defend the values that define a liberal democratic country such as this one. Failure to address this uncomfortable issue has meant that it has been outsourced to the far right. It is a sad indictment of a country in decline.

Worse, the enforcement of blasphemy laws in the UK is a stain on the vast majority of Muslims living here, who are peaceful, law-abiding citizens. Blasphemy laws, de facto or otherwise, infantilise Muslims by robbing them of their agency. It implies they require special rules and regulations to protect their feelings, making them seem incapable of living in a society that upholds liberal values. 

It has been over one hundred years since the death of John William Gott, the last individual imprisoned in Britain for the crime of blasphemy. Yet through our failure to act and speak up in defence of freedom of speech, it may not be long until someone else is put in prison for this ‘crime’. Rights are universal and non-negotiable; you cannot opt out of them. Offence must not be a motivating factor in what people can and cannot say. There is no right to not be offended. These are lessons that contemporary progressives need to learn. Liberty is a wonderful thing, guaranteeing both secular and religious people the freedom to believe what they want. If we wish to live in a free society, we must be free to blaspheme. We owe it to the next generation to keep reinforcing these points. But most of all, we owe it to people like Asfaq Masih. 

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*Correction, 21/5/23: This article originally reported that Asfaq Masih had been ‘executed by hanging’. It has now been amended to state that he was ‘sentenced to death by hanging’. We have not been able to verify whether the sentence has yet been carried out (see further report here).

The post The perils of dropping a book appeared first on The Freethinker.

I write this piece about freedom of speech from the perspective of someone who has had to make difficult decisions about who can and cannot speak. As a Vice Chancellor I was accused of Islamophobia for closing an Islamic prayer room and of being soft on terror for allowing a so-called ‘hate preacher’ to speak. I had to deal with demands for safe spaces, for bans on Israelis and Holocaust deniers, and with claims that ‘academic freedom’ gave academics the right to comment on anything. I learned that dealing with freedom of speech issues is difficult and that we do not always have the right framework or language to enter into a constructive conversation.

I assume that most of those who object to certain types of speech, who demand safe spaces, run no-platforming campaigns, wish to exclude people from some countries, demand bans on particular religious speakers, or those that have certain opinions on gender and other controversial topics, do so because they honestly think that they are doing the right thing and that these speakers represent a real threat to their vision of what a better world might be. Simply saying that they (those that would ban) are wrong is unlikely to get us very far. Labelling issues as ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ simply adds a layer of ideological adherence.

We often speak the language of rights. With rights often come duties: my right to be safe on the road comes with a duty to drive safely and a legal constraint not to go above 70 miles per hour. What duties come with the right to freedom of speech, and whose freedom of speech should we be concerned with? Voltaire (if it was he) has set a high standard: ‘I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ According to this famous quotation, freedom of speech concerns both my right to speak, but also the equal right of those I disagree with. Perhaps Voltaire could have added, ‘and we have a duty to listen courteously to each other.’ A right to speak is not worth much if we can only speak to ourselves, or those we agree with. I would argue that, alongside the right to speak, we should set out the duty to listen and, if we disagree, a right, perhaps a duty to say that we disagree.

Speech can cause or lead to real physical and mental harm. Most pogroms, lynchings, gay-bashings and racially motivated acts of violence start with words – whether drunken words in the pub, or demagogues on a platform. However, the proposition that we should ban all critical words has many dangers of its own: repression often starts with banning words. At the outer limit, speech that directly incites violence against others should be banned: there is neither a right to incite harm, nor a duty to listen to such speech. That decision is relatively easy. However, there is speech that attacks particular lifestyles, and may lead to harm by creating a negative perception of that lifestyle. We may have a duty to listen to such speech, in order to refute it.

Ultimately I am asking a question about which leads to a better society: banning speech that I do not like, or allowing it and trying to refute it. Banning does not abolish, it merely drives the sentiments into spaces where they are not challenged and may flourish. The words of a vaccine-denier, a homophobe, a misogynist or religious fundamentalist may cause harm; however greater harm may come from banning, both by driving such speech underground where it will not be countered, and by normalising speech bans.

Tolerant debate is not an automatic part of human culture. There have only been brief windows where it has flourished during the tens of thousands of years of humankind’s existence (for example, in classical Greece and since the Enlightenment) . Those brief periods of openness have produced the greatest flowerings of our understanding of our world and universe. Such examples suggest that the onus should be on those that want to ban or stifle topics to explain and justify why it is so important and beneficial to do so, rather than on those who want to preserve a culture of free speech.

As tolerance and engagement in courteous debate do not arise spontaneously, we need to create the environment for them to develop, and limit the existence of environments which promote and encourage intolerance. That means encouraging the skills of listening and debating. The environment I was brought up in treated argument as a sport: we would argue for the sake of arguing, sometimes for a position we did not hold. The argument mattered, not the arguer. Most of those I met at university had similar backgrounds, we stayed up late arguing. We cared, we had political and social convictions, but we also loved to argue. We believed that ‘the clash of ideas brings forth truth.’ Either I won the argument, or I lost, but had learned something, changed my mind and therefore had won knowledge. Something has changed in recent years. Identities and ideas have become more closely aligned, people have identified themselves with an ideology or belief system, and critiquing someone’s ideas has become viewed as an attack on the person. More people have come to University from a wider variety of backgrounds – a good thing. Many of them have come from backgrounds where argument and exposure to a variety of ideas is not the norm, indeed backgrounds where close adherence to a particular set of beliefs is the norm and it is seen as outrageous to attack the ideas.

We cannot expect those who have come from backgrounds where the opportunities to engage in debate and play with ideas are limited, or discouraged, suddenly to embrace the challenge, particularly if they feel their very identity is under attack. I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of ‘safe spaces’ for ideas. Ideas should be tested, questioned, developed and adopted or rejected. However, I have been fortunate in growing up in a safe space where new and challenging ideas were regularly introduced, and in the mutual understanding that a challenge to my ideas was not a challenge to me.

For those who have not had that fortune perhaps we should create safe spaces, with the proviso that they are there so that people can grow out of them. A safe space should not be forever. One of the challenges for Britain’s university system is how to bring together institutions based on open critical discussion with a changed student population which has different cultural experiences and assumptions to those that have hitherto been the norm. Indeed, students from backgrounds where debate is not the norm are even challenging assumptions about the purpose of the university: is it a gateway to a qualification and job, or a time and place for testing ideas and assumptions? I think that being at university without having your ideas tested is an opportunity wasted. We cannot force people to discuss and debate. We can, however, make discussion and debate a normal part of our culture, deliberately create the opportunities for it to happen, and be explicit that when you go to university you should expect to have your ideas challenged.

When I let a ‘hate preacher’ speak it was on condition that he spoke to a meeting which any student could attend. University Islamic Societies had invited in speakers who had engaged in ‘hate speech’ behind closed doors. Other universities had banned meetings, concerned about public order and reputation. Rather than simply ban speakers, I thought it important to change the basis of the event. Any university event should be open to any student without discrimination. Members of the Islamic Society and the LGBT Society sat in the same room, heard each other’s points of view and engaged in courteous disagreement, perhaps hearing something they had never heard before, and even changing their mind. I was proud of the students, and convinced that this was a better outcome than banning, with the result that the speaker would have spoken, unchallenged, at a private meeting.

I had previously closed a prayer room down because I could not be sure that hate speech was not occurring there. Indeed, some students had been prevented from using the room because they were the ‘wrong’ sort of Muslim. Furthermore I did not see why one group of students should be privileged over other in the provision of a dedicated prayer space. Offers of a ‘multi-faith’ space were turned down and protest prayers were held in the square outside the University and my office. Both my support for speakers excluded from other Universities and my closure of a prayer room were based on principles of opening out discussion, not closing it down.

This brings me to another thorny issue: that of academic freedom. What is its purpose, and why should academics have any protections over and above the ordinary citizen – if they should? Academic freedom concerns the intellectual independence of academics and universities so that received views and wisdom can be tested, and so that new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions can be proposed without putting the proposer’s career or life in jeopardy. It does not mean using your university position to propound support for ideas which lie outside your area of expertise and then claim that you have special privilege because you are an academic. What an academic brings to a debate is knowledge and evidence. The denier of the effectiveness of a particular vaccine who uses their academic position to criticise it, when they have no more understanding of its efficacy than the well-read lay person, is merely voicing another opinion, and has no right to expect to be supported if they use the fig-leaf of ‘being an academic’ to rant. There are good reasons for questioning the ethics, efficacy, and balance of risk of some vaccines, and we all have the right to take a stance, including an uninformed one, on these issues. Academic freedom, however, is based upon taking an informed stance.

Each of the issues I have touched upon demands a much more detailed treatment and, in the spirit in which this has been written, I hope that it sparks courteous debate. I have deliberately avoided a discussion of the limits of the ‘harm principle’ or the right not to be offended, as that would have required a very different approach. I could rightly be criticised for not discussing the limits to courtesy and tolerance. If there are times when we should be intolerant of others’ attempts to limit freedoms, then we should try to be intolerant courteously. There are also times when we may need to stop being courteous; however, those limits are rarely reached. Granted, it is hard to be courteous when faced with an angry racist outside a mosque or immigrant hostel. Questions of the limits to free speech are important and difficult for a freethinker.

The conclusion is that freedom of speech is not as simple as my right to express my ideas. Perhaps we need to think more about our duty to listen to other’s ideas and how that might bring about reciprocity. We need to change the basis of the discussion if we are to progress beyond hurling our freedoms at one another. Perhaps we should be more active in promoting freedom of speech as a social good, not just an individual right. As such it leads to more prosperous, resilient societies.

The post Free speech at universities: where do we go from here? appeared first on The Freethinker.

Suppose it were reported that three baby girls had bled to death following Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the UK.

Or that a whistleblower had reported that FGM was being carried out by British doctors, leaving girls ‘maimed for life’.

Or that a pharmacist had masqueraded as a girl’s mother in order to subject her to genital cutting but the judge had spared her prison, noting in mitigation that FGM ‘has great cultural and religious significance’ to her.

Readers would rightly be outraged by these incidents. Clearly, girls must be protected from parents who seek to surgically impose their religious or cultural views upon their daughters’ genitals. We naturally abhor these practices which violate bodily autonomy, provide no medical benefit, are rooted in misogyny and explicitly seek to constrain female sexuality.

But here’s the catch: horrors like those described above have actually happened, not to girls who have undergone FGM, but to boys, from circumcision.

Celian Noumbiwe, Angelo Ofori-Mintah, and Goodluck Caubergs were the baby boys who bled to death at the hands of their circumcisers between 2007 and 2012. Circumcision legally performed by British doctors is leaving boys ‘maimed for life’ according to the paediatric surgeon and whistleblower, Shiban Ahmed. Martina Obi-Uzom was the pharmacist entrusted with the care of an 11 month-old boy, only to have him circumcised against his parents’ wishes.

I do not write this article in the spirit of one-upmanship: I am not trying to instigate an ethical arms race between FGM and circumcision. Rather, I would like to persuade you that both practices are morally beyond the pale, and equally worthy of our disapprobation and contempt. In Finland last month, anti-FGM legislation that would have effectively treated FGM and circumcision as comparable practices stalled because a majority of lawmakers refused to accept them as comparable. This kind of failure is what happens when the two practices are treated as morally and legally distinct.

But perhaps there are important distinctions between FGM and circumcision that render them incomparable. After all, circumcision has much-vaunted health benefits. It is, surely, a safe and simple procedure that cannot in good conscience be compared to the barbarism of FGM. And FGM is steeped in patriarchal attitudes; the diminution of the female sexual experience is fundamental to its practice. Can the same be said for circumcision?

The first point can be dealt with quickly: there is not a single medical organisation worldwide that recommends the universal circumcision of newborn boys on health grounds. The much-cited 60% relative risk reduction in female-to-male HIV transmission for circumcised men sounds rather less impressive when converted to an absolute risk reduction of 1.3%. To explain: 1.18% of circumcised men across three trials became infected with HIV compared to 2.49% of controls. This can be reported either as an absolute risk reduction of 1.3% or a relative risk reduction of 60%. The fact is that, even when men are circumcised, condom use remains essential. In the US, where cultural circumcision is routine, HIV rates are higher than in the UK, where the practice remains relatively rare. And as for the so-called ‘hygiene’ argument that a circumcised penis is supposedly cleaner than one that is not, there really is a very simple solution: keep the penis clean by rinsing with water.

Let us turn now to a qualitative comparison of circumcision and FGM. Type 3 FGM, also known as infibulation, is the suturing shut of the vagina. It may also involve the removal of the clitoris. It is typically performed by medically untrained practitioners with non-sterilised equipment. Picture, by contrast, a male circumcision carried out by a doctor, in a hospital, under sterile conditions. Between the brutality of the former and the medicalisation of the latter there is, for the most part, no comparison.  

A second comparison, then: the Australian aboriginal practice of subincision, carried out under crude conditions, involves ‘slicing open the urethral passage on the underside of the penis from the scrotum to the glans, often affecting urination as well as sexual function’.  By contrast, picture a doctor, in a hospital, under sterile conditions, carrying out a form of FGM called clitoral nicking, which requires only the extraction of a single drop of blood. Again, for the most part, one of these procedures is incomparably more brutal than the other.

Clitoral nicking, however, is commonplace in Malaysia, where up to 99% of Muslim girls undergo FGM and a 2009 fatwa issued by the National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs deemed it obligatory. Ayan Hirsi Ali, an anti-FGM campaigner and herself a victim of FGM, said of the comparison: ‘I think male circumcision is worse than an incision [clitoral nicking] of the girl.’ In case you still have any doubts about the dangers of circumcision, consider the fact that four hundred South African boys died as a result of it between 2008 and 2014 and over half a million were hospitalised.

The point is this: there is a spectrum of invasiveness, harm and medicalisation in both FGM and male genital mutilation. The UK, however, rightly bans all forms of FGM under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, which holds that ‘it is immaterial whether she [the girl in question] or any other person believes that the operation is required as a matter of custom or ritual.’ This includes those forms of FGM which, in the case of Re B and G [2015] , a British judge held were ‘less invasive’ than male circumcision. The judge also ruled that male circumcision constitutes ‘significant harm’ under the Children Act 1989.

Consider, then, the following proposition:

1. All forms of FGM are illegal in the UK
2. FGM is illegal because it is harmful
3. Some forms of FGM are less harmful than male circumcision
4. Therefore, male circumcision should be illegal

This is the irresistible legal and moral conclusion to which one is drawn. Unless, that is, you are willing to advocate for the legalisation of those forms of FGM which are less harmful than male circumcision.

In fact, that is exactly what the American Academy of Paediatrics briefly did in 2010: ‘the ritual nick [Type IV FGM] suggested by some paediatricians is not physically harmful and is much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting … It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm.’ While it is to the AAP’s eternal shame that they ever proposed legalising ‘less harmful’ forms of FGM, one must, at least, credit the internal consistency of their argument.

* * *

It is uncontroversial that FGM is practised, at least in part, to curb female sexuality. But what of male circumcision? The Sephardic Jewish philosopher Maimonides, considered one of the foremost Torah scholars of the Middle Ages, wrote of circumcision: ‘one of its objects is to limit sexual intercourse … for there is no doubt that circumcision weakens the power of sexual excitement.’ It was, he said, ‘a means for perfecting man’s moral shortcomings. The bodily injury caused to that organ is exactly that which is desired.’

Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, concurred: ‘of all the delights which pleasure can afford, the association of man with woman is the most exquisite, it seemed good to the lawgivers to mutilate the organ which ministers to such connections.’ For the avoidance of doubt, both of these men were in favour of circumcision.

Perhaps less well known is that circumcision was also legitimised by the medical establishment of Victorian Britain. According to historian Ronald Hyam:[1] ‘Widely believed to dampen sexual desire, circumcision was seen positively as a means of both promoting chastity and physical health.’ ‘Spermatorrhea’ – an imagined pathology supposedly caused by loss of semen through any means other than marital sex – enjoyed widespread credence. Hence why circumcision, seen as a prophylaxis against masturbation, was an important treatment.

Naturally, these ideas also migrated across the pond. John Harvey Kellogg – of Cornflakes fame –  advocated a plain diet and universal neonatal circumcision as a ‘remedy’ to masturbation. In 1894, the Maryland Medical Journal even suggested circumcision as a ‘solution’ to the racist moral panic in America surrounding the possibility of black men attacking white women: ‘the legal enforcement of the circumcision among the negro race would effectually remedy the predisposition to raping inherent in this race.’

It is only since the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s that proponents of circumcision have sought to downplay, rather than emphasise, its effects on male sexuality. But the evidence base for its harms is only growing. The NHS website includes ‘permanent reduction in sensation in the head of the penis, particularly during sex’ as a complication of circumcision. This should come as no surprise given that the foreskin is the most sensitive part of the penis to light touch and warmth. The adult male foreskin contains up to 20,000 erotogenic nerve endings and makes up to 50% of the motile skin of the penis. Circumcision leads to the keratinisation of the head of the penis, keratin being the tough structural protein which fingernails are made of, which in turn leads to desensitisation and diminished sexual pleasure.

Slowly but surely, however, the human rights community is waking up to the inconsistency of its treatment of male circumcision when compared with FGM. After all, Article 24(3) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly enshrines the right to protection from harmful traditional practices. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has said that circumcision constitutes a ‘violation of the physical integrity of children.’ It is also opposed by the Royal Dutch Medical Association and the Danish Medical Association. In 2018,  Icelandic parliamentarian Silja Dögg Gunnarsdóttir proposed a ban on circumcision, arguing that ‘[e]very individual, it doesn’t matter what sex or how old… should be able to give informed consent for a procedure that is unnecessary, irreversible and can be harmful. His body, his choice.’ Despite Icelanders supporting the bill by a 13% margin, it was abandoned after lobbyists mischaracterised it as religious discrimination.

In its 2016 concluding observations on the UK, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that the government should ‘ensure that no one is subjected to unnecessary medical or surgical treatment during infancy or childhood, guarantee bodily integrity, autonomy and self-determination to children concerned.’ The Committee were referring to FGM and intersex surgery. If only they had the courage to take their recommendation to its logical conclusion, by applying it to circumcision as well.

[1] Quoted by Robert Darby in A Surgical Temptation: the demonization of the foreskin and the rise of circumcision in Britain, 2005: University of Chicago Press.

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The post Circumcision: the human rights violation that no one wants to talk about appeared first on The Freethinker.