| Islam and Pluralism | |
| 04 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| A cast-iron case for a secular society | |
|
Nick Cohen The Observer, Sunday August 3 2008
Anti-discrimination legislation once aimed to ensure that society treated citizens equally. By removing irrelevant criteria, the law allowed the victims of prejudice to receive the same rights as everyone else.
When the Commission for Racial Equality investigated racism in the building industry, it said that a man's skin colour was irrelevant to whether he would make a good worker. A black bricklayer should have the same opportunities as a white bricklayer. Today's supporters of homosexual adoption say that the sexuality of a couple is irrelevant. If they can show they would make good parents, they should have the same rights to adopt as everyone else. The argument among economists about the gender pay gap is, at root, an argument about relevance as well. Are women paid less because they take time off to have children or because of misogynist employers' irrelevant prejudices?
Now politicians, judges and the godly are trying to turn religion into an equal opportunities cause. The language sounds the same as in the 20th century, but the consequences could not be more different. Instead of fighting for equality, they are demanding special treatment and the social fragmentation that goes with it.
Last week, Mr Justice Silber ruled that Aberdare Girls' School in South Wales had been guilty of racial discrimination when it excluded Sarika Watkins-Singh for insisting on wearing a religious bracelet. It was a trivial case, which made you wonder about the dogmatism of both sides and the quality of their lawyers. The school could have given way - the bracelet was little more than a slim band. Watkins-Singh's parents could have accepted that they had a duty to uphold the authority of the teachers. Still, for all the pettiness, Mr Justice Silber's judgment was remarkable for his inability to recognise that a just society should treat people equally. He didn't rule that all the girls at Aberdare had the right to wear bracelets, just Watkins-Singh, because she was its only Sikh pupil.
So imbued with discriminatory thinking have politicians and judges become that they are shocked when citizens ask for equality before the law. When the hapless Ed Balls was at the Treasury, the Plymouth Brethren told him that they and their more fundamentalist offshoot - the Exclusive Brethren - were the victims of religious prejudice at the hands of that unlikely source of bigotry, the tax authorities.
Both sects believed that God decides when you died. To their members, compliance with the state's requirement to take out an annuity at 75 forced them to second-guess God by blasphemously betting on the date of their deaths.
The obliging Balls created an alternative pension scheme and then spluttered when pensioners of all faiths and none saw his generous loophole and shifted large sums of money through it. He seemed to think he could legislate for one group without the law applying equally to everyone.
If he did not have the strength of principle to stand up for equality, he ought to have had the wit to realise that the Plymouth Brethren may not have been as devout as they appeared. If you sincerely believe that an omnipotent God controls every aspect of your life, you place your fate in his hands. You do not ask accountants to lobby ministers for tax-efficient changes to pension law.
The same lack of seriousness applies to others who shout that they are the victims of religious discrimination. Watkins-Singh was not a perfect example because the law treats Sikhs and Jews as racial as well as religious groups. But before her, Lillian Ladele persuaded an employment tribunal that it was discriminatory for Islington Council to require her to perform her duties in a register office. She objected to organising gay civil partnerships solely on the religious grounds that she was an evangelical Christian who regarded homosexuality as a sin. When the tribunal found for her, it not only endorsed homophobia and ruled that religion took priority in a register office - where gay and straight couples go to escape religion - but failed to see a glaring inconsistency.
If Ms Ladele thought homosexuality sinful, she should not have wanted to work for an institution that organised 'gay weddings'. The same objection applied to the Muslim checkout staff at Sainsbury's who refused to scan alcohol. If the sale of alcohol was as offensive to their religious principles as they claimed, they would no more want to work for a company that sold wine than a pacifist would want to join the SAS.
The old questions about equality and relevance come back with a vengeance in these cases. The courts offer no protection to workers who have no religious reasons for their homophobia. Employers are still free to fire them just as teachers in South Wales are still free to send home girls who want to wear bracelets because they look pretty. However, the law is intervening to stop employers taking the same action against religious workers even though they are unwilling to do their jobs properly.
I wonder how far the judiciary and the government are prepared to go before they realise the absurdity of their actions. The Exclusive Brethren tells its members not to watch television. If the BBC refused to hire one of their number on the reasonable grounds that he had never seen a TV programme, would it be guilty of religious discrimination? Believers in some versions of Orthodox Judaism hold that women can't be witnesses in religious cases.
Muslim believers in sharia say that the testimony of a Muslim woman or non-Muslim man is worth only half as much as evidence from a Muslim man. If Orthodox Jewish and Wahhabi Muslims stand by these principles in an interview, would the law officers be guilty of religious discrimination if they said they were unfit to be judges in an English court?
The way out of the mess is for the state to commit itself to secularism; to offer full religious freedom, while striving to keep religion out of the public sphere. Leaving all considerations of principle aside, secularism is the only ideology that can make a multifaith society work. The alternative is a future of competitive religious grievance and unremitting vexatious litigation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/03/race.equality |
| Islam and Pluralism | |
| 04 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| A cast-iron case for a secular society | |
|
Nick Cohen The Observer, Sunday August 3 2008
Anti-discrimination legislation once aimed to ensure that society treated citizens equally. By removing irrelevant criteria, the law allowed the victims of prejudice to receive the same rights as everyone else.
When the Commission for Racial Equality investigated racism in the building industry, it said that a man's skin colour was irrelevant to whether he would make a good worker. A black bricklayer should have the same opportunities as a white bricklayer. Today's supporters of homosexual adoption say that the sexuality of a couple is irrelevant. If they can show they would make good parents, they should have the same rights to adopt as everyone else. The argument among economists about the gender pay gap is, at root, an argument about relevance as well. Are women paid less because they take time off to have children or because of misogynist employers' irrelevant prejudices?
Now politicians, judges and the godly are trying to turn religion into an equal opportunities cause. The language sounds the same as in the 20th century, but the consequences could not be more different. Instead of fighting for equality, they are demanding special treatment and the social fragmentation that goes with it.
Last week, Mr Justice Silber ruled that Aberdare Girls' School in South Wales had been guilty of racial discrimination when it excluded Sarika Watkins-Singh for insisting on wearing a religious bracelet. It was a trivial case, which made you wonder about the dogmatism of both sides and the quality of their lawyers. The school could have given way - the bracelet was little more than a slim band. Watkins-Singh's parents could have accepted that they had a duty to uphold the authority of the teachers. Still, for all the pettiness, Mr Justice Silber's judgment was remarkable for his inability to recognise that a just society should treat people equally. He didn't rule that all the girls at Aberdare had the right to wear bracelets, just Watkins-Singh, because she was its only Sikh pupil.
So imbued with discriminatory thinking have politicians and judges become that they are shocked when citizens ask for equality before the law. When the hapless Ed Balls was at the Treasury, the Plymouth Brethren told him that they and their more fundamentalist offshoot - the Exclusive Brethren - were the victims of religious prejudice at the hands of that unlikely source of bigotry, the tax authorities.
Both sects believed that God decides when you died. To their members, compliance with the state's requirement to take out an annuity at 75 forced them to second-guess God by blasphemously betting on the date of their deaths.
The obliging Balls created an alternative pension scheme and then spluttered when pensioners of all faiths and none saw his generous loophole and shifted large sums of money through it. He seemed to think he could legislate for one group without the law applying equally to everyone.
If he did not have the strength of principle to stand up for equality, he ought to have had the wit to realise that the Plymouth Brethren may not have been as devout as they appeared. If you sincerely believe that an omnipotent God controls every aspect of your life, you place your fate in his hands. You do not ask accountants to lobby ministers for tax-efficient changes to pension law.
The same lack of seriousness applies to others who shout that they are the victims of religious discrimination. Watkins-Singh was not a perfect example because the law treats Sikhs and Jews as racial as well as religious groups. But before her, Lillian Ladele persuaded an employment tribunal that it was discriminatory for Islington Council to require her to perform her duties in a register office. She objected to organising gay civil partnerships solely on the religious grounds that she was an evangelical Christian who regarded homosexuality as a sin. When the tribunal found for her, it not only endorsed homophobia and ruled that religion took priority in a register office - where gay and straight couples go to escape religion - but failed to see a glaring inconsistency.
If Ms Ladele thought homosexuality sinful, she should not have wanted to work for an institution that organised 'gay weddings'. The same objection applied to the Muslim checkout staff at Sainsbury's who refused to scan alcohol. If the sale of alcohol was as offensive to their religious principles as they claimed, they would no more want to work for a company that sold wine than a pacifist would want to join the SAS.
The old questions about equality and relevance come back with a vengeance in these cases. The courts offer no protection to workers who have no religious reasons for their homophobia. Employers are still free to fire them just as teachers in South Wales are still free to send home girls who want to wear bracelets because they look pretty. However, the law is intervening to stop employers taking the same action against religious workers even though they are unwilling to do their jobs properly.
I wonder how far the judiciary and the government are prepared to go before they realise the absurdity of their actions. The Exclusive Brethren tells its members not to watch television. If the BBC refused to hire one of their number on the reasonable grounds that he had never seen a TV programme, would it be guilty of religious discrimination? Believers in some versions of Orthodox Judaism hold that women can't be witnesses in religious cases.
Muslim believers in sharia say that the testimony of a Muslim woman or non-Muslim man is worth only half as much as evidence from a Muslim man. If Orthodox Jewish and Wahhabi Muslims stand by these principles in an interview, would the law officers be guilty of religious discrimination if they said they were unfit to be judges in an English court?
The way out of the mess is for the state to commit itself to secularism; to offer full religious freedom, while striving to keep religion out of the public sphere. Leaving all considerations of principle aside, secularism is the only ideology that can make a multifaith society work. The alternative is a future of competitive religious grievance and unremitting vexatious litigation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/03/race.equality |
War on Terror 01 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com What Pakistan's Intelligence Ties Say About Ending Terrorism
By Douglas Farah
July 30, 2008
The International Herald Tribune today reports on a recent CIA mission to Pakistan to confront leaders of the ISI there about the ties ISI members retain to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The CIA assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The CIA has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks.
This is not new, but is useful when juxtaposed with the conclusions of the new and very useful Rand Corporation report on how to end terrorism.
While the central argument of the study is to make police work and intelligence the backbone of the counterterrorism efforts, it also argues strongly for a greatly reduced U.S. military presence and overall reduced footprint abroad.
Make policing and intelligence the backbone of U.S. efforts. Al Qa'ida consists of a network of individuals who need to be tracked and arrested. This requires careful involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as their cooperation with foreign police and intelligence agencies.
Minimize the use of U.S. military force. In most operations against al Qa'ida, local military forces frequently have more legitimacy to operate and a better understanding of the operating environment than U.S. forces have. This means a light U.S. military footprint or none at all.
The problem with that approach, particularly in Afghanistan and along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border is precisely that many of those who are classified as allies in combating radical Islamist are, in fact, not allies at all.
The CIA's often less than careful involvement with the ISI, and cooperation with local police and intelligence agencies simply provides information to the enemy.
The solution often cannot be the liaison relationships with other services. For many, the groups we consider to be hostile are heroes, martyrs and allies to those services. Establishing something in common, and building trust, is virtually impossible.
I am not arguing against the basic thrust of the report on the need, in a broad sense, to rely less on the military to do the vast bulk of counterterrorism work.
The fact is that the military has often been thrust into roles it is not equipped and does not want to handle. They get the job because they are on the ground where few other US agencies are, including the CIA.
The solution, in part, has to be to get others out there, including the intelligence community, so the ability to understand and counter al Qaeda comes from a broader breadth of experience than simply the military.
But this is not possible as long as US embassies are largely shells of their former selves, with greatly reduced staffs and the inability of diplomats to actually get out and do their jobs. And this includes the station chiefs and agents in many instances.
The military does what it does, and it does it well. But it has been asked to do too much. A shift in policy toward more intelligence and police work, however, is extremely problematic, given the history of human rights abuses and internal terror of many of those with whom U.S. agencies would have to engage.
It would also require a significant shift in resources, something that is unlikely as long as the war in Iraq is going on and Afghanistan continues to threaten to fall apart.
It seems to me unlikely another warning from the CIA to the ISI will be productive. The warnings have come and gone, and at the end of the day, the ISI remains an unreliable ally, if an ally at all.
posted by Douglas Farah
1.
To me, it seems you have commensense.
— rich Jul 30, 13:32 #
2.
Common sense,yes, but an answer, Mr.Farah does not have.
Where will the embassies find all the people they need everywhere?
There are many resources that the agencies can use, but choose not to use.
— Ahmed Haenni Jul 30, 14:39 #
3.
Juxtapose the following two comments by Mr. Farah in his colum, and then giggle:
"... many of those who are classified as allies in combating radical Islamist are, in fact, not allies at all."
"But this is not possible as long as US embassies are largely shells of their former selves, with greatly reduced staffs and the inability of diplomats to actually get out and do their jobs. And this includes the station chiefs and agents in many instances."
The State Department and Central Intelligence Agency are not our allies in the war on terror any more than the ISI is.
Kenneth Timmerman made that point in his Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender.
--
Asadullah Syed
3:25 AM
Sultan Shahin
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