The death sentence of Salman Rushdie imposed by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 may have been, according to the analysis of the Iranian scholar Mehdi Mozaffari, technically not a ‘fatwa’ but a ‘hukm’: an order to kill the person stated. Unlike a fatwa, a hukm continues to be valid beyond the death of its author. Whatever the technicalities, Khomeini’s ‘fatwa’, as it is usually known, continues to be in force. This has been demonstrated less by the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie on 12 August 2022 than by the reactions to it in the Islamic world. These indicate that the assassination attempt was rooted in religious ideology. This raises two questions:

1. How far are crimes like these directly related to religion? And to the extent that they are, why are these religions, their institutions and followers in open societies like those of western Europe, granted a privileged position in the state through exceptions from otherwise generally applicable laws?

2. Conversely, if there is no direct connection to Islam in such crimes, one difficulty for non-Muslims, and also for advocates of Islam themselves, is how to comprehensibly and precisely delineate which attitudes, statements and actions are ‘Islamic’ and which are not. Is it possible to draw a distinction that is sufficient to hold Islamic entities accountable for their pronouncements and to establish a duty to explain themselves?

The problem with cultural relativism

In the cultural relativism common among Western progressives, the connection between violence, murder and religion is often played down or even denied. The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, for instance, commented on the events in Iran at the end of September in a speech in the German Bundestag:

‘When the Iranian regime bludgeons women in the name of religion, it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with religion! It is an expression of a power system based on humiliation & violence.’

She was referring to protesting women who removed their veils after the young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by police a few days earlier for not wearing her headscarf ‘properly’. Meanwhile, the protests have resulted in over 600 deaths so far, according to a Wikipedia page which keeps track of them.

It can of course be argued that whether a headscarf is ‘correctly’ worn is not a simple matter of Islamic doctrine, but of interpretation and culture. However, that does not mean it has nothing to do with religion. Baerbock is right about one thing: the Iranian regime is indeed a system of power based on humiliation and violence. However, its laws and their execution are also based on religious ideology: Iran is a constitutional theocracy. Islam also forms the basis of a state religion in more than twenty other countries, leading to an ideological congruence of politics and religion.

The fatwa in Europe

In Islamic states with their state religions, secular and religious laws may be interchangeable. But this does not mean that fatwas are a phenomenon limited to the Islamic world. Islam is also part of European societies, and, in its organised form, is interested in spreading its teachings, legal opinions and injunctions among its followers – just like any other religion. In some countries, attempts are being made to control Islam through theological faculties at state universities. Education, however, is not limited to state institutions.

Political scientists Nina Scholz and Heiko Heinisch, experts in the field of political Islam, explain in an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung how the Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines (IESH) is training Islamic teachers for several European countries. The IESH was founded by the FIOE (Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe), and has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Unsurprisingly, there are overlaps in personnel with other religious organisations. One of the IESH’s deans, for example, is also deputy secretary-general of the ECFR (European Council for Fatwa and Research). This council, based in Dublin and Leeds, has made it its task ‘to transfer the application of Islamic norms to European conditions, i.e. to give advice to Muslims living here and to draw up fatwas.’ As Scholz and Heinisch also observe, ‘In its expert opinion, the Fatwa Council explicitly defends the right of Islamic states to condemn and execute apostates according to the Sharia.’

‘Radical fringe phenomenon’?

It must be emphasised that many Islamic associations, institutions and Muslims living in enlightened democracies have condemned atrocities carried out in the name of Allah. What cannot succeed, however, is to pretend that the above cases of Mahsa Amini and Salman Rushdie have nothing to do with religion.

Nor are these cases isolated. Evidence for this comes from the Iranian protests, and has also been highlighted by the Councils of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Germany. These councils bear witness to the numerous apostates who have fled Islamic states because of their sexual orientation, their criticisms of religion, and other violations of religious laws. But the persecution does not end at the borders of the Islamic world. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie led to a decades-long, worldwide manhunt, backed by a bounty of several million US dollars, and to other attacks (some of which were fatal).

The way in which critics of Islam and Islamic regimes have been murdered is undoubtedly linked to the religion itself. Moreover, such murders have been supported, accepted or at least tacitly condoned by notable sections of the Islamic world. This statement can be made with some certainty, although no figures are available at this point as to what proportion of Muslims worldwide approve of the recent attempt against Rushdie and Khomeini’s fatwa. The latest polls from the UK are decades old. It would be interesting to see how far this has changed in recent years.

It may well be that the majority of Muslims worldwide do not endorse Khomeini’s order. However, this is not sufficient to prove that such an order is incompatible with Islam. To see events like the attempt against Rushdie, the waves of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamic extremists in the last two decades, and the bludgeoning of protesting women, as all the effect of ‘radical Islam’, ‘political Islam’ or ‘Islamism’ may be, when all is said and done, reasonably accurate. However, the choice of words does not say much about how widespread the support is for this kind of violence. The public reactions from people calling themselves Muslims around the world to the attack on Rushdie were sometimes joyful, and were too many to be dismissed as merely ‘fringe’.

The monolith

At this point in the debate, the argument is often raised that Islam should not be perceived a homogeneous block. But even someone who does not study Islam is aware that this religion is interpreted in different ways by different sects and individuals. All of us know Muslims who share the values of liberal societies – as well as, at least from media reports, those who prefer to fight for the Islamic State. Distinguishing between these attitudes to Islam is not rocket science. We may assume that the average attentive media consumer has already heard of at least some of the main groups – Sunnis, Shiites, Salafists, Wahhabis, Taliban, and so on – and does not assume that they all adopt exactly the same views and forms of behaviour.   

It is precisely the matter-of-factness with which these distinctions are made that should give pause for thought to those Muslims who distance themselves from the substantive foundations of their own religion. For non-Muslims, despite all their ability to make distinctions, it is hardly possible to attribute crimes carried out on behalf of Allah to a non-religious Islam or to a variety that is not tolerated within Islam. Attempts like the German Foreign Minister’s to say that those who commit crimes in the name of Islam are not really following the religion, or have misinterpreted it, rely on a type of ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy.

If, then, some conservative or fundamentalist interpretations of Islam lead to violence and are inimical to liberal democratic values, it is all the more urgent for public advocates for a liberal interpretation of Islam to draw a clear line between their understanding of their religion and that of the fundamentalists.

The case of Austria

Of course, no private citizen has to justify themselves for things they have not done, and no one is answerable for the crimes of other followers, or purported followers, of their religion. But such crimes are problematic for organised and official Islam, and Islam as it is presented in public debate, since it wants to be perceived as a unity and as finely differentiated at the same time. The political approach of many European states in trying to categorise Islam, somewhat as was done under Turkish secularism, makes these difficulties of perception even worse. Turkey is considered a secular state, but it maintains an authority, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), to control Islam. This is not a model for the separation of republic and religion, but a nationalisation of religion.

Among the response of European countries to the Islamic diaspora, the situation of Austria has its own particular characteristics and history. The country inherited an ‘Islam law’ (Islamgesetz) which was enacted in 1912 under the Habsburg Emperor Charles I. The annexation of the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina required that an autochthonous Islamic population be legally recognised in the state. The law survived two world wars and was replaced in 2015 – at a time when I was a Member of Parliament – by a new Islam law, which structurally follows the so-called ‘Israelite law’ (Israelitengesetz).

In some respects, however, Muslims in Austria are clearly placed at a disadvantage. In contrast to other religious communities such as the Catholic Church, the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGÖ) does not receive any subsidies. Islamic organisations are also subject to a ban on funding from abroad, and must explicitly profess the fundamental values of the Republic. It is remarkable in itself that one religion is treated worse than another – and the compatibility of this with the ECHR is questionable – but the government’s plan goes so far as to create, in the IGGÖ, a counterpart which can be controlled by the state and which serves as a rallying point for the most diverse Islamic currents.

In contrast to Christianity, for which Austrian law recognises different denominations separately, Islam is considered under the Islam Act of 2015 as a monolithic bloc. If individual Islamic sects or currents do not fit into this and do not want to join the IGGÖ, they cannot exist as legal entities. This unity has been supported by both sides.

This is first of all demonstrated by the fact that the IGGÖ had already formulated a claim to sole representation for Muslims in its 2009 constitution, which can no longer be found in later versions: ‘Article 1 (5) All Muslims (without distinction of gender, ethnic origin, school of law and nationality) who have their main place of residence in the Republic of Austria belong to the Islamic Religious Community in Austria.’ Second, under the 2015 Islam law, Islamic associations that do not want to submit to the regime of the IGGÖ must be officially dissolved. Several such associations have in fact been dissolved under this provision. But this is not compatible with religious freedom, and illustrates the opportunistic lack of principle of the law-makers in matters of religion.

The monolithic stance in the current Islam law is driven by the shared interest of the IGGÖ and the prevailing policy of Austria to integrate anything that is Islamic into one instrument, in order to facilitate collaboration and control between state and religion. But in fact, all major religions break down into many sects and many more currents, up to and including personal interpretations of faith and position to the community. A state like Austria, which operates a cooperative model of state and religion, imposes on itself, at least in theory, the duty not to undermine this distinctiveness.

In practice, the inclusion of everything Islamic in a single religious community means that the IGGÖ also represents and is responsible for the radical fringes of Islam. In other words, thanks to the uneasy alliance between Austrian law and the IGGÖ, this organisation now legally includes sub-groups that are hostile to an open society. The question follows of why such an organisation should enjoy a special status in that society. This situation is neither logically comprehensible nor ethically justifiable.

On the level of principle, it also seems bizarre and unjust that individual ideologies, world views or religions should be granted exceptions from universally applicable laws. In a secular democracy, the fairer and more just solution would be to strip all legally recognised religions, including Islam, of their privileged legal status and associated privileges of all kinds, including tax exemptions, religious education in kindergartens, schools and universities, protection under blasphemy laws, and so on.

Islam in the open society

This leaves the second question posed at the beginning of this article, concerning the obligation on public representatives of Islam to explain what counts as ‘Islamic’. Is the murky boundary between cultural, ‘religious’ Islam that is not responsible for crimes like the attack on Rushdie, and the allegedly non-religious Islam which is blamed for such crimes, sufficient to hold Islamic entities accountable for violence committed in the name of their religion?

A secular observer cannot easily become an expert in the various currents, schools of law and doctrinal principles that have evolved over time within a complex and ancient religion like Islam. Such an observer can but judge the outward manifestations and effects of religious belief upon its followers. If Muslim organisations with significant public influence claim that those who practise violence in the name of their religion are not its true followers, then it is up to them to demonstrate this by clearly demarcating the boundaries between ‘true’ and ‘false’ Islam – or, if this is not possible, then at least between acceptable and unacceptable versions of it. Many Protestants today do not consider that the Catholic Church’s positions on women and homosexuals are really ‘Christian’ – and yet they cannot deny that unfashionable and inhumane attitudes are rooted in the teachings of Christianity as a common heritage.

As with Christianity, there are many dark as well as bright moments in Islam’s intellectual and cultural past. As also with Christians, there are, it is to be hoped, many Muslims who would like to see the development of a modern version of their religion: one which irrevocably cuts all ties with the violence in its heritage and which can be integrated into a liberal democracy. The onus is on these religious progressives, if they wish to prove that their interpretation of their religion is compatible with liberal values, to clarify its differences from more fundamentalist strains.

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The post When does a religious ideology become a political one? The case of Islam appeared first on The Freethinker.

Below, we present a brief update by Niko Alm on two cases brought by followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster against Austria in the European Court of Human Rights, which handed down its decision on both yesterday. Almost inevitably, the Pastafarians lost. What is interesting is why they lost, and what this says about the state of religious privilege in Europe today. –Ed.

On 15 December 2022 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) published its decisions on two applications brought by Pastafarians in Austria.

Case 1. Sager v Austria (2022)

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Austria (CFSMA) wanted to acquire the legal personality of a ‘confessional community’. This was denied by the Austrian authorities and courts, despite the fulfilment of all substantial and formal requirements – respectively, the existence of cult and rite, and a minimum of 300 members.

Austria’s Federal Administrative Court had to be very creative in its reasoning in order to comply with the informal request made of it by the Department of Religious Affairs (Kultusamt) to deny the CFSMA recognition. The core argument was that although the applicant fulfilled all the legal requirements, its members were not sufficiently religiously active to form a community. This requirement is not stipulated in the law but was simply made up by the judge.

The proceedings lasted almost four years and went through all judicial levels up to the Austrian Constitutional Court, which marked the end of the appeal process in 2019.

Case 2. Alm v Austria (2022)

This was my own case. I applied for a new passport and identity card, each with a photo showing me with a pasta crown, which with its wire-like appendages symbolised my ordeal through all the official channels. The authorities refused my application with this photo despite my meeting all the (other) requirements. Headgear may be worn on photos for religious reasons. I claimed religious reasons, but the arbitrariness of magistrates and judges was stronger than truth and justice.

The decisions of the ECtHR

In its rejection of the two applications, the ECHR mainly relied on the ruling in De Wilde v The Netherlands, which was pursued by Dutch Pastafarians. Mienke de Wilde applied for a driving licence using a photo in which she wore a colander on her head. She went through all judicial levels up to the ECtHR, which rejected her application, holding that Pastafarianism is not ‘serious’ enough to be a religion.

Arguably, the Court was wrong in this case: religion is primarily constituted by the self-declaration of its adherents and should not have to be measured against the criteria of a court. In any event, de Wilde’s case ought not to have contributed anything to the matter of the Austrian applications, because the evaluation of the Dutch interpretation of Pastafarianism should have been irrelevant to the Austrian one. The Court should have taken into account the specific characteristics of Pastafarianism and its adherents in Austria.

Moreover, although the Court referred to the arguments of the Austrian courts and the Austrian Department of Religious Affairs, it quite obviously did not consider any of the applicants’ arguments.

In a statement published on its website (in German), the CFSMA, of which I am a member and Master of Celery, expressed itself ‘disappointed’ with the Court’s decision. ‘It saddens me that the ECtHR does not take Pastafarianism seriously and questions our faith,’ said Supreme Maccherone Philip Sager.

Reportedly, the Almost Supreme Maccherona, Nadja Entner, was also shocked. ‘In my opinion,’ she said, ‘the judgement of the ECtHR is unjust, almost discriminatory. Our religious community and the concerns of our Church members are not taken seriously. Young, innovative world religions like Pastafarianism have no chance at all of being recognised, even though all the state-defined criteria are met. Despite everything, we will continue to fight for religious freedom and for equal treatment and equal rights for religious communities.’

The CFSMA is not planning to give up, but to ‘start the legal process again’. ‘In the past eight years, during which we have fought for our fundamental rights, we have been able to learn and improve a lot. I am hopeful that we will soon reach a positive result with the Department of Religious Affairs,’ said Sager.

I also wrote a statement for the website, as follows:

For me, the renewed rejection of the Pastafarians in court does not come as a surprise. In all procedural steps, both in the (attempted) recognition of the CFSMA as a ‘confessional community’ and now also with regard to ID documents with pasta crowns, the authorities and courts have shown themselves to be uncomprehending and uncooperative.

I cannot understand, tolerate or accept this rejection from a democratic point of view. Obviously, the wearing of headgear for religious reasons, i.e. in the broadest sense ideological or conscientious reasons, is allowed in Austria in passport photos. If Pastafarians – or non-Pastafarians – simply make use of this freedom for whatever reason, then no harm is done to anyone, neither to individuals, nor to organisations, society, taxpayers or the state. There is no cost to exercising this freedom. 

Why so much energy has been sunk in incomprehensible, absurd and illogical arguments,
up to and including outright lies, from the Department of Religious Affairs to magistrates, administrative and supreme courts and now the ECtHR, is beyond me. The simpler, cheaper and more elegant decision would have been to simply accept what is worthy and right: to allow the pasta crown in the identity card. The only person who would have made a fool of himself would have been me. Now the Constitutional Court and the ECtHR have ridiculed themselves. But why?

Ultimately, these procedures are an expression of the undemocratic entrenchment of organised religion in our laws, which wants to secure its privileges, right down to its headgear, with the help of secular jurisdiction.

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The post Religious Privilege 2 : 0 Pastafarians appeared first on The Freethinker.

Although every Western country has the freedom of religion enshrined in its constitution or other human rights law, it seems that still only adherents to traditional, established religions actually fully enjoy that right. To address this inequality, one can organise protest marches, send tweets and write articles. If this sparks any reaction at all from government officials, it will probably be in the form of a reassurance to the protesters that they have misunderstood the situation and that all religions are truly treated equally.

But there is a different approach that forces authorities to reveal their actual position: filing an application that in some way involves religion, for example requesting official recognition for a new church or invoking a religious exception. This is what Pastafari(ans) have done in several European countries over the last ten years or so. In most cases, the authorities refuse to treat Pastafarianism, aka the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (‘FSM’), on a par with other religions.

After a brief overview of this young religion and the tradition of which it is part, we will consider a series of court cases in the Netherlands and Austria resulting from applications that were rejected. From these, we will draw a tentative conclusion as to why the state authorities might want to decide that some beliefs count as ‘real’ religions, but others do not.

‘Invented religions’

In Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010), Carole Cusack described several recent spiritual movements of the Western world that are different from traditional churches and are often called ‘invented religions’. Examples of these are the Church of All Worlds (1962), Discordianism (1963), the Church of the Sub-Genius (1970s), Jediism (2000), Matrixism (2004), and the FSM Church or Pastafarianism (2005). Instead of ‘invented’, which is not a distinguishing characteristic, it might be better to call them New, Unknown, Weird and/or Small (‘NUWS’) religions – a term proposed by Derk Venema. Yet even when these religions seem, especially to members of traditional churches, satirical, dishonest or motivated by rebelliousness instead of reverence, such properties still do not set them apart from older, larger and better known religions. Surely Jesus was a religious rebel? Doesn’t Mormonism come across as a satire on Christianity?

Moreover, although there are many competing functionalist and essentialist definitions of religion, caught in an eternal power struggle, a generally agreed definition of religion does not exist. Cusack has argued that it is impossible to distinguish the religiousness of adherents to new and weird religions from the religiosity of people who identify as, for example, Christians or Muslims. Because of this vagueness, and the separation of church and state, Western governments usually adopt a very broad concept of religion. We shall see, however, that governments and courts are not so open-minded when it comes to concrete applications by adherents of a non-traditional religion like Pastafarianism.

Pastafarianism

In 2005, the Kansas Board of Education decided to oblige schools to teach intelligent design theory alongside evolution theory in biology classes. Bobby Henderson, a science student from Portland, Oregon, was baffled by this decision and sent them a letter. He explained his indignation about omitting one very important version of intelligent design, including an all-powerful, invisible, flying monster made of spaghetti and meatballs. Subsequently, inspired by this noodly deity, he wrote the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and later the Loose Canon appeared.

Through the internet, the FSM became very popular, and Pastafarians founded churches in his name all over the world. The Gospel tells that in Pastafari heaven there are stripper factories and beer volcanos, and in hell the beer is lukewarm and the strippers have sexually transmittable diseases. It is strongly advised to wear pirate regalia at certain occasions, and to dine with pasta and beer on Fridays, the holy day. Many Pastafari consider it obligatory to wear a colander on their heads, especially on festive occasions, although a German branch views this as blasphemy.

The eight I’d-really-rather-you-didn’ts, received by pirate Mosey from the FSM himself on top of Mount Salsa, contain the most important Pastafarian ethical standards. Overlapping with many other religious ethics, they promote an attitude of friendliness, toleration, charity, non-violence, critical thinking, modesty, joy, humour, and wise budgeting, as the sixth I’d-really-rather-you-didn’t advises:

‘6. I’d Really Rather You Didn’t Build Multimillion-Dollar Churches/Temples/Mosques/Shrines To My Noodly Goodness When The Money Could Be Better Spent (Take Your Pick):

1. Ending Poverty

2. Curing Diseases

3. Living In Peace, Loving With Passion, And Lowering The Cost Of Cable.’

The Netherlands

In the Netherlands, four different types of applications have been filed, one of them ultimately reaching the European Court of Human Rights. The first one was an application by the Dutch FSM Church for the legal personality of ‘religious association’ (kerkgenootschap), which is exempt from several duties – e.g. concerning financial administration – that all other legal persons (associations, foundations etc.) do have, according to the Dutch Civil Code. This application was initially turned down, but approved upon appeal in 2016. It was the first and only successful application in this important year for Dutch Pastafarianism. Later in the same year, the church applied for registration as a Public Benefit Organisation, but was turned down.

Also in 2016, the same applicant, Dutch FSM church founder Dirk-Jan Dijkstra, filed a third application: this time, he requested a driver’s licence with a photo in which he wore a colander. To his disappointment, the mayor denied it, so he took it to court. The courts’ decisions in this and similar cases revolve around the exception to the rule that forbids headwear in ID photos:

‘Deviating from section 2 [banning headwear], a photo [with headwear] can be accepted if the applicant has shown that there are religious or world view [levensbeschouwelijke] reasons against not covering the head.’

Consequently, to get his ID photo with colander approved, the applicant would have to convince the court of two things: 1) Pastafarianism is a religion or world view, and 2) the Pastafarian applicant has bona fide religious reasons that require him to wear the colander in the photograph. In this case, Dijkstra cited a holy text to substantiate his claim that the colander is indeed religious headwear for Pastafari:

‘But as T.V. hadn’t been invented yet, Penelope put the Holy Colander on her head and grabbed a handy pair of salad tongs.’

(Loose Canon, Book of Penelope, Ch. 2, verse 7)

Additionally, the official FSM website recommends it: ‘Why not wear a colander in your ID photos?’

Sadly, the appeal was denied on the grounds that the applicant did not always wear the colander, and used to take it off when speaking with clients as a legal advisor. The legal status of the FSM Church as a religious association was not deemed relevant. Interestingly, the court did not decide that Pastafarianism is not a religion or world view, only that the applicant’s reasons were not exclusively religious.

(In fact, before the court cases started, a few ID applications with colander photos slipped through the bureaucratic net. This means that there are still some Dutch Pastafari who do sport a colander in their ID photos – until they expire, of course.)

The fourth Dutch Pastafari case also involved a denied driver’s licence application. This time, the courts denied it on different grounds: that Pastafarianism does not meet the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) requirements for recognition as a religion or faith. According to the ECHR, a purported religion only counts as real when it ‘attains a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance’. After losing the case as well as the appeal to the highest Dutch administrative court, the Pastafarian Mienke de Wilde and her legal counsel (Derk Venema) took the case to the ECHR. This court declared the application inadmissible, but this was no summary ruling: in 18 pages, the court explains Pastafarianism, illuminates the Dutch case, translates the Dutch ruling, and justifies its decision that no human rights have been violated by it. Although formally the case was not decided on its merits, in reality it was.

In section 52, the court concurs with the Dutch highest administrative court that Pastafarianism suffers from a ‘lack of the required seriousness and cohesion’. The Dutch court based its conclusion on the following argument:

‘In particular, the required seriousness and cohesion are lacking. The…parodying scriptures are distinctive features in this connection. The lack of cohesion is illustrated, for example, by the relationship set out in Henderson’s letter between the decline in the number of pirates since 1800 and global warming.’

Interpretative restraint?

In their assessment of the realness of Pastafarianism as a religion, it is highly questionable whether both courts remained within the bounds of the required interpretative restraint regarding matters of religion. It is interesting that the judge who conducted the interrogation at the Dutch high administrative court also wrote an authoritative commentary on the Dutch constitution emphasising the importance of this restraint. What’s more, seriousness or satire are often in the eye of the beholder. Might Jesus not have been regarded a parodist by first century Jews? Are all the stories in the Bible and the Quran ‘coherent’? This is at least a matter of interpretation – religious interpretation, which is not the province of the law or the state.

Considering some of the religious or world view movements that have been recognised by the ECHR, it is even more incredible that Pastafarianism was rejected: Scientology, pacifism, atheism, Druidism, Divine Light Zentrum, and the Osho Movement are all judged bona fide. So even an aggressive, authoritarian, commercial and allegedly exploitative organisation like Scientology is a legally approved church, but the FSM Church is not.

The German Pastafari Bruder Spaghettus, who already possessed a driver’s licence with pirate headgear, applied for an ID card with the same photograph. It was rejected on the same grounds used by the other courts, and Bruder Spaghettus settled for a (non-regulated) religious beard tie. The reasoning of all these courts is especially worrying because it reeks of arbitrariness. When is a ‘certain level’ of seriousness reached? Does it imply that real religions can only be deadly serious? Is humorous evangelisation forbidden? But as Carole Cusack has shown, applying humour or having a joking founder does not disqualify the followers of a faith from being considered real believers. Moreover, as the philosopher Nick Martin has argued, the courts tacitly and subjectively take seriousness as a sign of integrity. The fallacious implication is that absence of seriousness entails a lack of integrity.

Because of its non-specificity, the ECHR’s criterion of ‘seriousness’ runs the risk of being used more widely to disqualify what Venema has called NUWS religions: the religious content is judged not credible and thus there is no real religion. But that is why it is called ‘faith’: it is a leap of faith to put your trust in something incredible. State authorities seem to treat NUWS religions as ‘nuisance’ religions. These cases reveal not only these courts’ common tendency to judge the authenticity of a religion by comparing it, consciously or not, to traditional religions, but also the zealousness with which they are inclined to disqualify the FSM church. As if keen to prove the latter point, the Dutch Ministry for the Interior sent a letter to all municipalities urging them to reject any ID application with a colander photo.

The Struggle for Pastafarianism in Austria

If you want to wear any type of headgear in your driver’s licence photo in Austria, as in the Netherlands, it is allowed only for medical or religious reasons. Other than that there is a no-hats policy.

As an atheist, Niko Alm, co-author of this article, thought this unfair and devised a plan to circumvent that rule. At the same time, he was also, and still is, a Pastafari. There is no contradiction here: you do not have to believe in anything specific, you can be agnostic or even atheist and still count yourself a member of a religious organisation – whether in Austria or anywhere else. So he donned a pasta strainer as his own personal religious headgear and applied for his licence in 2009. It required some persistence and a trip to the public health officer, who wanted to check whether he was sane enough to drive a car, but in the end Alm succeeded in procuring the first official document with Pastafarian appendages. The news went viral in 2011 and many fellow ‘believers’ worldwide followed suit. It would remain the only victory against Austrian bureaucracy for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Austria (CFSMA) until today. And many battles have been fought.

Becoming official

In 2014 the newly founded Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Austria filed an application with the Department of Religious Affairs to be registered as an officially recognised ‘confessional community’ (Religiöse Bekenntnisgemeinschaft). This is the first step to become an ‘officially recognised church or religious community’ (gesetzlich anerkannte Kirche oder Religionsgesellschaft) in this two-tier system of religious organisations.

In Austria, there are 16 religions falling in the ‘officially recognised’ category including the major Christian denominations, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and 11 confessional communities including Hinduism, the Unification Church (formerly Moon sect), and Bahá’í.

To be granted the status of confessional community, the organisation has to prove that it is a religious community in theory and practice by submitting its statute in writing and a list of at least 300 members with permanent residency in the country. The status of a confessional community does not come with a lot of benefits. It more or less serves as the anteroom to take the next step that requires membership of at least 0.2% of the population (approximately 18.000 people) and a minimum qualifying period of five years. But it is worth the wait. The status of ‘officially recognised church or religious community’ yields a plethora of privileges: religious education in schools; state-funded religious teachers, university professors and faculties; direct subsidies; tax exemptions; a blasphemy law; military chaplains, imams and rabbis; various seats in committees and national public broadcasting; and many more. The Republic of Austria is fostering a cooperative model of state and religion; it is safe to call the ‘officially recognised churches and religious’ communitieswhat they to all intents and purposes are: state religions.

The Austrian Pastafari naturally wanted to belong to this elite club of organised world views and also to benefit from the abovementioned privileges. But they were turned down. First by the Department of Religious Affairs and later – after the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster had taken Austria to court – by the state legal system. Finally, after five years of going through all official channels, the CFSMA was turned down by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that its members did not form a real community. In essence, the judge held that the CFSMA is not a confessional community yet, so it cannot actually have members, and instead needs to prove that at least 300 people participate in its rites. That argument is not only partially circular, it is also an elaborate divergence from the law that requires no such thing. It should not matter whether the rites are executed in large numbers at one place or whether the total number of members is made up of individuals worshipping in private.

All the other criteria were fulfilled. In the court’s sealed copy of the judgment it was clearly stated that Pastafarianism is a religion and in its character as such is indistinguishable from other established and recognised state religions. A small victory at least.

European Court of Human Rights, again

Undeterred, the Austrian Pastafari filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in November 2019. So far, this application has remained unanswered:

‘The refusal to recognise the legal personality of the religious denomination of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster violates in any case the fundamental right of the complainants to freedom of belief and conscience (Art. 9 ECHR). Art. 9 ECHR protects the right to profess or not to profess a religious community or ideology alone and privately [a point apparently missed by the Austrian courts], or in community with others, publicly or in circles of like-minded people, especially in religious services or otherwise by words or deeds. Freedom of religion includes the right to try to convince others, e.g. by teaching (ECtHR 6.11.2008 – 58911/00). This also forms the core of the scope of protection of Art 9 ECHR. These rights are violated by the refusal to grant legal personality. The establishment and existence of independent religious communities would also be indispensable for pluralism in a democratic society.’

Soon after, another appeal had to be filed at the ECHR when the Austrian legal system terminated Alm’s hopes of procuring a passport and national ID card with Pastafarian headgear. This time around, he decided to wear a modest pasta crown instead of a colander, but the authorities firmly stood their ground in denying his rights, by referring to their earlier judgment that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was not an officially recognised confessional community – and thus not a state religion. After Alm had spent several years enjoying religious freedom as far as his driver’s licence was concerned, the bureaucracy seemed to have changed its mind, and decided that religious freedom was not a right but a privilege granted only to those deemed appropriate.

‘Church’: a trademark

The Austrian Pastafarians have dragged the Republic and its institutions to court several times. Most recently, in May 2022, the CFSMA suffered another blow when it was refused the right to call itself a ‘church’, because this term was reserved for officially recognised Christian denominations. This time round, the judges followed an argument that the Department of Religious Affairs had used previously to deny the CFSMA official status: apparently, by calling their Church a ‘church’, the CFSMA may be rendering itself liable to being confused with Christian churches. This is interesting, given that Jesus Christ himself is the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – until anybody can prove otherwise. This makes Pastafarianism essentially a Christian denomination too.

The judge refused to see the paradox here, but he at least conceded that the Church of Scientology ought not to call itself a church either, even though it is registered as such in Austria. This time around, the Pastafarians chose not to appeal. Instead, they are going to change their name to ‘Kitchen of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’ instead. It seems more appropriate anyway, and in German the words are near-homophones: Kirche and Küche.

Self-defence

Well into the 21^st century, democracies that are founded on constitutional values of equality have been expunging various forms of differentialism, whether based on gender, ethnicity or class, from their laws. Yet individual world views and organised religions are still being used to enforce legal discrimination. Freedom of religion, once part of the essence of liberty, has been transformed into a tool to secure special rights and immunise religious world views against open societies. Instead of its original function of protecting small religious communities against the state and established churches, freedom of religion is now used to protect state and established religions against small ones and their critical stance.

Pastafarianism strives to abolish these remnants of differentialism, not only in liberal democracies like Austria, Germany and the Netherlands but in political systems worldwide. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is seeping into societies globally from the US and the UK to Russia, Australia, Israel, and, rather furtively, also into countries shaped by Islam. It serves as a mirror, sometimes as a Trojan horse, a role model and a weapon of democratic self-defence.

Editor’s note: some of the legal cases in which the authors were involved were the subject of I, Pastafari (2019), a documentary directed by Michael Arthur which the Freethinker can heartily recommend. We are grateful to the latter for permission to reproduce two images from the film above.

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