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False Memes from the Burkini Wars

2016-10-10

The controversy which raged in the summer of 2016 over the issue of the burkini on public beaches in France led to the publication in blogs, social media, etc., of many false memes—in other words, a lot of nonsense. Here I debunk some of them.

Sommaire en français La controverse autour du burkini sur les plages publiques de France, qui faisait rage en été 2016, a déclenché des flots de sophismes et de faussetés sur les médias sociaux et dans plusieurs blogues. Dans ce texte je démens plusieurs des ces faussetés :

Que le burkini n’est qu’un bout de tissu, un vêtement comme les autres.

Que les opposants du burkini veulent tous l’interdire partout.

Qu’il ne faut jamais dire à quiconque quoi porter ou ne pas porter.

Que les règles vestimentaires religieuses et laïques sont pareilles.

Que le burkini n’est pas plus grave qu’un habit de nonne.

Que le burkini n’est pas plus sexiste que le bikini ou autre tenue sexy.

Que l’opposition au burkini n’est qu’une réaction de l’extrême droite catho et une façon de gagner des votes.

Que les Musulmans en France actuellement, c’est comme les Juifs en Allemagne nazie.

Que les opposants du burkini instrumentalisent la laïcité pour faire la chasse aux musulmans.

False Meme #1: It’s just a piece of cloth.

The burkini is just a piece of cloth? Just a mundane article of clothing? Bullshit. All versions of the Islamist veil, including the burkini, hijab, tchador, niqab, burka, etc., are part of a campaign by Islamist fundamentalists and Islamofascists to normalize special articles of clothing which are banners to promote their politico-religious agenda.

That campaign is in turn part of the Islamists programme to oppose, by legal means or otherwise, secularism wherever it exists or where there are plans to implement it. French secularism or laïcité is a major target because it is the avant-garde of secularism.

False Meme #2: Those who oppose the burkini want to ban it everywhere!

All those who criticize the burkini and other versions of the veil want to ban them everywhere? No, no & no. Many people oppose Christianity, but few would support banning it everywhere! Whether there should or should not be a ban, or rather bans, depends very much on the type of veil, the place, the circumstance, the context. I personally happen to think that it was a mistake when the mayors of several French seaside towns tried to ban the burkini on their local beaches—and for at least three reasons:

The burkini does not obscure the face, so like the hijab (and unlike the niqab) it is not an obvious security issue.
It was clear that such municipal regulations would be declared illegal, and that is indeed what happened.
As could have been predicted, the controversy degenerated into a propaganda victory for Islamists, who take every opportunity to play victim.

I would however support banning the burkini at sporting events and public swimming pools. At any rate, allowing the burkini on public beaches must not blind us to the nature of the Islamists’ programme. They will continue to make every attempt to score points in their fight against secularism. That is simply one more reason why secular measures must be applied with rigorous respect for the rule of law.

On the other hand, there are some who would ban the burkini even on public beaches. I respectfully disagree, but I give them full credit for recognizing the danger which the burkini, as an Islamist veil, represents. (However those who oppose any ban anywhere and consider that the burkini is just another clothing choice are intellectual slobs in my opinion.)

In light of the recent terrorist attack on Nice, the act of wearing a burkini on a beach in that region was a contemptible act of provocation. We may choose not to criminalize it, but we must condemn it. If, as I have suggested, it was a trap, then the guilty party is composed of those who set the trap. Those duped by the trap include not just the mayors who adopted anti-burkini measures, but even more so the fools who demonized those mayors for their action.

False Meme #3: You must never tell anyone what to wear.

You must never tell anyone what to wear or what not to wear? Really? The fact is that various dress codes of various types are ubiquitous in society. Some restrictions on dress are codified in law, but many are not written down and some are not even verbalized explicitly. Sometimes dress codes are simply understood implicitly, constantly renegotiated verbally or non-verbally as people test a code’s limits by violating it in small ways while respecting it in large measure. Here are a few examples:

workplace dress requirements
uniforms for special professions (police, judges, nurses, etc.)
laws against nudity (even in one’s own home if visible from the exterior)
formal occasions
military uniforms
ceremonies, official or otherwise
sporting events, official or otherwise, international or not, uniforms for athletes, for referees, guidelines for officials
school uniforms

Some of these dress codes we could probably do without. Is it really necessary to outlaw nudity everywhere in public or where visible by the public? We can debate that. Are school uniforms really a good thing? Maybe, maybe not. Many, indeed most dress codes can be questioned. But to state baldly that ALL dress codes can be dispensed with is irrationnal. Thus, to a question such as, “Should the clothing XYZ be banned?” the only appropriate answer is another question, or rather series of questions such as: Where? When? In what context? When worn by whom while they perform what duties? Without some context for the original question, it probably cannot be answered adequately.

Furthermore, it must be recognized that personal freedoms cannot be absolute. One individual’s personal freedom is limited by, among other things, other peoples’ freedom.

False Meme #4: Religious dress code, secular dress code, same thing.

Religious constraints such as the Islamist veil are no worse than secular dress codes? So when Islamists insist that any woman who does not wear the veil is impure and deserves to be treated with contempt or even raped (or have acid thrown in her face), that is the same as a secular dress code which would ban the veil for, say, public servants while on duty? What false symmetry! What specious nonsense! The first rule is a blatant attack on women’s freedom, gender equality and human dignity. The second rule is a small restriction which limits the scope of that attack. The first rule undermines freedom, the second mitigates the damage done by the first.

False Meme #5: Nuns on a beach, Burkinis on a beach, same difference.

The burkini is comparable to the habit worn by Christian nuns? Really? How deplorable that it should even be necessary to debunk this stupid comparison. The habit is worn only by a tiny elite minority of Catholic women, those who have gone through a rigorous screening process. The Islamist programme is that the veil should be worn by ALL “good” Muslim women and that any woman who does not wear one is a slut just asking to be abused. The analogy is grossly misleading.

False Meme #6: Islamist veil, boob job, g-string, etc., same subjugation to macho norms.

You say that the burkini is no more sexist than g-strings, high-heel shoes, bikinis, miniskirts, etc.? Horsefeathers. The veil, including the burkini, is a flag of an extremely dangerous politico-religious movement. See the discussions above.

False Meme #7: Banning the burkini is nothing other than a right-wing Catholic reaction and a ploy to gain votes.

This meme at least has the merit of having some degree of plausibility. There are some right-wing groups who make a pretence of supporting secularism, or at least some version of secularism, whereas their real agenda is to exploit fears of immigration. In France, the Front National (FN) is the most obvious example. However, this reason taken alone is an extreme oversimplification. For one thing, if among immigrants we may find a significant number of fundamentalists or even extremists—and that is certainly the case for Muslim immigration—then such fears are not unjustified. More importantly, we must recognize that groups such as the FN, even if we consider them to be extreme right-wing, are far less extreme than Islamofascism. Political Islam is undoubtedly the greatest threat to secularism in France and is far to the political right of the FN.

False Meme #8: The situation of Muslims in France today is similar to that of Jews in Nazi Germany.

This outrageous analogy is completely over the top. It is an odious insult to both Jews and the French. In reality, there is a certain proportion (and they are not a tiny minority) of Muslims in France who are Islamists or sympathetic to political Islam; they have much more in common with Nazis than they do with Jews.

False Meme #9: Opponents of the burkini are misusing secularism as a tool to persecute Muslims.

This is perhaps the most damaging of all these false memes because it is potentially the most effective at neutralizing opposition to political Islam. First of all, the target of any hostility is political Islam, not all Muslims. Secondly, the idea that secular principles must be applied exclusively to state institutions is simplistic. The fact that secularism is first and foremost a program of governance, to be applied to public institutions, does not imply that secular principles cannot be applied elsewhere as well. Given the danger which political Islam represents (and the veil is one of its major tools), if secularism can mitigate that danger then so much the better. That is not a misuse of secularism, rather it is what secularism is for: preventing religions from imposing themselves on the public, so as to protect freedom of conscience.

Next blog: Multiculturalism, Orientalism and Exoticism

Of Pigs and Prayer

The Selective Outrage of Islamophiliacs

2016-06-23

The seriousness of the recent pig’s head incident in Quebec City has been greatly exaggerated by some. What is just as serious, indeed more so, is the contempt shown by most of our politicians for citizens who are legitimately concerned about radical Islam, thus increasing the likelihood of such mean-spirited, threatening gestures.

Sommaire en français Plusieurs média ont grandement exagéré la gravité d’un événement récent, lorsqu’une tête de porc a été laissée à la porte d’une mosquée de la ville de Québec. Ce qui est aussi grave, encore pire au fait, est l’attitude de mépris affichée par la plupart de nos politiciens à l’égard des citoyens qui se préoccupent raisonnablement de l’Islam radical. Cette attitude augmente la probabilité de tels gestes mesquins et menaçants.

Recently many media have been in a tizzy, doing their best to manufacture excessive outrage over an instance of anti-Muslim mischief. A pig’s head was left on the doorstep of a Quebec City mosque recently. The pig’s head was gift-wrapped and accompanied by a greeting card inscribed with the erroneously spelt (but phonetically correct) words “Bonne appétit.” This was an act of provocation in very poor taste, but no more alarming than a small number of cases of minor vandalism reported over the past few months in various locations across Canada, unacceptable of course, but hardly surprising considering the current political climate.

Indeed this incident was much less serious than other acts of provocation perpetrated by persons who, while claiming to be friends of Muslims in general, are in reality objective allies of extremists (and in fact responsible for the current political climate), acts which were far more “hateful” than the pig’s head incident.

The most disturbing aspect of the severed pig’s head incident is the possibility of violence, unspoken but implied: given such a bloody mess, are other acts of bloody violence thus intended? On the other hand, animal heads are inevitable by-products of food provisionning in our society, so perhaps no violence is implied.

As for the choice of a pig, as opposed to any other animal, this aspect is evidently a dig at Muslim dietary practices which, like most religious practices, are irrational, arbitrary and baseless. So this aspect is hardly disturbing—on the contrary. Furthermore, the fact that this occurred during the “holy” month of Ramadan is also significant, given that the fasting imposed during Ramadan is a major threat to the health and welfare of Muslims and is often used as a way to threaten and intimidate individuals who exercise their freedom by choosing not to fast. Maryam Namazie (see links below) calls it the “heinous, dark month of Ramadan.”

A more subtle aspect of this case is disturbing in a completely different way: I think we can assume that it was an expression of fear—fear of Islam? or fear of Muslims?—and that this fear is partly legitimate. I must stress this point: fear of Islam is not unjustified. That fear has been allowed to fester by the inaction of political leaders, such as Premier Philippe Couillard and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who have taken a complacent approach to radical Islam. Even worse, such leaders have been complicit with fundamentalist Muslims, using the latter as clients to support their political goals, and have unscrupulously accused the fearful of various “sins” such as xenophobia and intolerance.

Finally, this event raises the all-important issue of distingishing radical or extremist Muslims from others. By adopting a very Islamophile attitude, mainstream politicians cultivate a climate of censorship of criticism of any form of Islam, thus stifling necessary debate which would help the public to be better informed and to take a more nuanced attitude. The perpetrator(s) of this incident, for example, were they targeting all Muslims, or only those they perceived as radical? What about the Quebec City mosque where they pig’s head was left: do radical Muslims have significant influence there, or do they not? How can we find out, if politicians tell us that we must simply shut up and say nothing against Islam?

Are you, dear reader, outraged by the pig’s head incident? Perhaps your outrage is rather selective. I have a few questions for you:

Were you outraged when … the Moderator of the United Church of Canada … stupidly accused supporters of a niqab ban of “Islamophobia” … ?

Were you outraged when the United Church of Canada recently held a public-prayer event in collaboration with the Muslim Association of Canada? This was an act of provocation more serious than the pig’s head. It involved moderate Christians helping fundamentalist Muslims to invade public space with their religious rituals—rituals which should occur only in places of worship. Worse, the media reported this event in a totally non-critical, indeed approving manner! (You are invited to sign the petition calling on the mayor of Montreal to prevent such events.)
Were you outraged when, in December 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a statement defaming the supporters of Quebec’s Charter of Secularism?
Were you outraged when, during the federal election campaign of October 2015, Justin Trudeau, Thomas Mulcair and many others slandered all those who supported a ban on the niqab during citizenship ceremonies?
Were you outraged when, during that same campaign, the Moderator of the United Church of Canada, Jordan Cantwell, stupidly accused supporters of a niqab ban of “Islamophobia”, thus spreading the idea that opposing fundamentalism is immoral?
Were you outraged during the 2013-2014 debate over the Quebec Charter of Secularism when supporters of secularism where denigrated and slandered as “intolerant,” “xenophobic,” “racist,” or worse by opponents of the Charter who included an unholy alliance between the Liberal Party of Quebec and fundamentalist Muslims?

Running through the above examples is a common thread of opposition to secularism, a white-washing of fundamentalist Islam and a failure to distinguish between fundamentalist and secular Muslims. By secular Muslims I mean those who welcome modernity and secularism and accept to practice their religion—if they practice it at all—in private, so as not to impose it on others. (I prefer not to use the term “moderate” because so-called moderate believers, while personally rejecting the most retrograde aspects of their religion, fail to denounce those aspects definitively, this enabling fundamentalists who continue to practice them and demand privileges based on them.)

For example, granting Zunera Ishaq the privilege of wearing the niqab at citizenship ceremonies as if the niqab were representative of Muslim women’s dress serves to assimilate all Muslims to radical, fundamentalist Muslims, because only the latter promote the wearing of such oppressive clothing. Claiming that allowing the niqab is a “victory” for Muslim women grossly misrepresents who Muslim women are, and is an insult to the many women who have courageously resisted the imposition of the veil in Muslim-majority countries, often at great personal risk.

mainstream politicians, by failing to take clear action against Islamist radicalism … and worse, by showing utter contempt for critics of Islam, fail to reassure a concerned public and instead contribute to the climate of fear …

Most important of all, mainstream politicians, by failing to take clear action against Islamist radicalism—for example, by banning the niqab in official ceremonies, by banning foreign financial support to religious institutions in Canada, by investigating more thoroughly what sorts of discourse are commonplace in Canadian mosques—and worse, by showing utter contempt for critics of Islam, fail to reassure a concerned public and instead contribute to the climate of fear, thus increasing the probability of mean-spirited actions such as the pig’s head incident. Ordinary citizens concerned about religious radicalism have not only been abandoned by our country’s leaders, they have been treated with outright disdain, and this is especially true in Quebec where support for secularism is strongest.

Yes, whoever delivered the pig’s head to that mosque in Quebec City acted very stupidly—but no more stupidly than Justin Trudeau, Thomas Mulcair, Jordan Cantwell and many others. If the pig’s head gifters had instead behaved intelligently, they would have sought co-operation with ex-Muslims and secular Muslims who do not practice Ramadan, together they would have organized a public event involving a feast during daytime in Ramadan, and instead of leaving a pig’s head they would have left a kind invitation to all Muslims, and everyone else, to join in the festivities and partake of the feast in defiance of Ramadan. And on the menu, I would suggest a variety of dishes to please a variety of palates, including, among other meats, a few pork dishes and maybe even some head cheese.

Apostasy is a Human Right

The criminalization of apostasy is the religious equivalent of rape.

2016-04-07

The right to leave a religion, i.e. apostasy, is a necessary aspect of freedom of conscience. To deny a person that right, i.e. to force them to accept a system of beliefs and practises against their will, is analogous to forcing them to submit to sexual acts against their will. Furthermore, the denial of the right to apostasy is closely related to the essentialism underlying multiculturalism and the myth of religious obligations.

Sommaire en français Le droit de quitter une religion, c’est-à-dire d’apostasier, est un aspect incontournable de la liberté de conscience. Refuser ce droit en forçant un individu à accepter un système de croyances et de pratiques, contre la volonté de cet individu, est analogue à une obligation de se soumettre involontairement à des actes sexuels. De plus, la dénégation du droit d’apostasier est étroitement liée à la mentalité essentialiste qui soutient le multiculturalisme et le mythe de l’obligation religieuse.

Imagine that someone makes you a proposition. But, you are told, the only acceptable response you may give is “Yes.” You may be allowed your choice of several ways of saying “Yes,” but you must pick one of them because a response of “No” is simply unacceptable. Or, in a slight variant of this game, you have apparently said “Yes” at some time in the past — perhaps recently, but maybe in the distant past, perhaps even when you were a child too young to understand the proposition to which you were responding. In any case, you no longer have any choice, you may not say “No.”

I am sure that you would be upset, probably extremely upset, at being put in such a predicament, especially if the proposition were an unpleasant one.

If the proposition in question were of a sexual nature, this is called rape. You would be the target of a sexual proposition to which you would be forced to submit.

Now consider this: although there are varying opinions on the matter, according to Islamic doctrine, apostasy, i.e. the conscious abandonment of Islam by a Muslim, is a sin, in general a crime, and often a capital crime. In fact, according to a 2013 study by the Pew Research Center, millions of Muslims are of the opinion that apostasy should be punishable by death. This means that if a Muslim person—either one born into that religion or who converted to it—should begin to question his or her faith, i.e. if they find themselves faced with the proposition “Do you wish to remain a Muslim?” then only an affirmative answer can save them from being considered at least a sinner and probably a criminal, and quite possibly a criminal deserving of death. A response of “No” is not an option.

So again, if the proposition is sexual, it is called rape. But if the proposition is religious, and if that religion is Islam, then we normally have a complete and absolute denial of freedom of conscience. There are of course secular Muslims who take a more flexible approach, but they are not in the mainstream of Islamic doctrine and theology. Furthermore, there may exist other religions which have such severe and draconian rules about apostasy, but I am unaware of them. If such religions exist, they must be far less important demographically than Islam.

[…] if a Muslim cleric or spokesperson asserts freedom of religion but fails to repudiate the Islamic condemnation of apostasy, then they are hypocritical; the so-called “freedom of religion” which they claim for Muslims is completely vacuous and worthless.

We thus see that mainstream Islam is utterly incompatible with freedom of conscience, which includes both freedom of religion and freedom FROM religion, and the latter implies the freedom to apostatize if one so chooses. Therefore, if a Muslim cleric or spokesperson asserts freedom of religion but fails to repudiate the Islamic condemnation of apostasy, then they are hypocritical; the so-called “freedom of religion” which they claim for Muslims is completely vacuous and worthless.

In both sexual and religious contexts, if one is not allowed to say “No” then any response of “Yes” becomes meaningless.

The Islamic condemnation of apostasy has implications for religion in general. Indeed it influences attitudes—even attitudes held by non-believers—towards religious affiliation. The reprobation of apostasy is complementary to the idea that religious belief and religious affiliation are in some way essential to the identity of the individual believer, as if that affiliation were immutable. This essentialist point of view is of course completely false: there is nothing innate or immutable about religion. The religion to which one belongs, if any, is in general completely determined by the milieu in which one is raised as a child; i.e. it is the result of the indoctrination of children, except for those few who convert as adults. (Here I am excluding forced conversions which are commonplace during the expansion of a religion by wars of conquest.) Religious affiliation has nothing to do with genetics or race. Even sexual orientation, which is subject to some flexibility and fluidity, is far more innate than religion.

Those Muslims who oppose apostasy so vehemently also exaggerate the importance of religious affiliation to the identity of the individual, and this strategy is self-serving: i.e. they seek to minimize deconversions among Muslims in order to avoid loss of numbers and loss of influence.

Furthermore, the myth of religious obligations—the notion that an individual participates in certain religious practices or wears certain clothing because he or she is obligated to do so—serves a similar purpose: it exaggerates the importance of religion to personal identity in order to freeze Muslims into their affiliation and prevent them from fully exercising their freedom of conscience, because if they did so, many would inevitably leave Islam and many of those would become atheists. In reality there is no such thing as a religious obligation to which individuals autonomously submit; on the contrary, either individuals choose their religious practises, or they are being coerced by others, in which case they are victims of abuse and need help to regain their freedom. The myth of religious obligations is a tool to deny freedom and, ultimately, to promote atheophobia.

To make matters worse, many non-believers, even some atheists, fall into the trap of accepting the essentialism which underlies the condemnation of apostasy. They implicitly accept the misconception that religious practises and clothing are somehow obligatory and unquestionable—and therefore must be accommodated. We thus have the pathetic spectacle of people who claim to be secularists opposing secularism in practise and promoting multiculturalism, an essentialist ideology which attaches greater importance to the ethno-religious affiliation of the individual than it does to his or her freedom of conscience. The ethno-religious determinism facilitated by multiculturalism is the ultra-light version of the denial of apostasy. Both weaken or threaten freedom of conscience.

Next blog: Words to Cultivate

Tag: islam

False Memes from the Burkini Wars

Of Pigs and Prayer

The Selective Outrage of Islamophiliacs

Suggested Links

Apostasy is a Human Right

The criminalization of apostasy is the religious equivalent of rape.