A Very Public Sociologist: Religion

Showing newest posts with label Religion. Show older posts

Tuesday, 12 January 2010

Islam4UK Banned: A Socialist View

[Home secretary Alan] Johnson said: "I have today laid an order which will proscribe al-Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, and a number of the other names the organisation goes by.

"It is already proscribed under two other names - al-Ghurabaa and The Saved Sect.

"Proscription is a tough but necessary power to tackle terrorism and is not a course we take lightly.

"We are clear that an organisation should not be able to circumvent proscription by simply changing its name."

And so the amateur controversialists in al-Muhajiroun have had a banning order slapped on them.

However, from the point of view of the ever-eroding democracy we have in Britain this is indefensible. Nor is it particularly a wise move from a "security" point of view.

That al-Muhajiroun and its various front groups are deeply unpleasant and reactionary is incontrovertible. Yet they are perfectly entitled to their opinions. Ideologically they may be profoundly illiberal and downright anti-socialist, but as far as I'm aware they do not intimidate their opponents or seek to physically disrupt their activities. They pose zero threat to what liberals and conservatives call 'civil society', nor do they significantly challenge the labour movement. True, their brand of political Islam plays into the hands of Islamophobic scare mongering by the gutter press and the far right, but is that reason enough to ban them? That they have a membership among Muslims comparable to the most irrelevant and shrill elements of the Trotskyist left demonstrates the lack of resonance their ideas have.

According to the same BBC report, al-Muhajiroun's founder-leader Omar Bakri Muhammad said of the news "I think it is a grave mistake because it will force them underground". For once, he speaks a truth. Study after study has shown that there is a minority of Muslim-Asian youth who are profoundly alienated from British society for a whole host of reasons. While it is true al-Muhajiroun has only recruited a tiny percentage of this layer their victimisation at the hands of the state can act to *enhance* their status as a radical Islamic answer to the status quo. Is that really what anyone who cares about deepening democracy in British society wants?

Yes, it does appear there are "coincidences" between al-Muhajiroun membership and bomb plots, in the same way there's coincidences between BNP membership/support and would-be terrorists. But neither fundamentalist Islam or white nationalism by themselves *cause* terroristic actions. They, like the ideas they seek inspiration from, have their well-spring deep in the bowels of a deeply unequal, authoritarian and alienating society. Being tough on terrorism requires being tough on the causes of terrorism - and that requires a politics committed to profound social change. Unfortunately for Alan Johnson, while his ban on Islam4UK will secure some positive headlines it will do nothing to ameliorate the sources of disaffection.

Monday, 4 January 2010

Mary Daly: Death of a Feminist

Yesterday the controversial feminist theologian, Mary Daly, died (short obituaries can be read here and here). Describing herself as a "radical elemental feminist", her views have been variously identified with the separatist, essentialist and transphobic wings of radical feminism.

Daly was probably best known outside of her discipline for refusing to admit male students to her theology classes at the Jesuit-run Boston College, a course of action that led to her enforced retirement in 1999. Undoubtedly most obituaries over the coming days will focus on this controversy.

I maybe a socialist and committed to women's equality and liberation, but as a man I find Daly's views deeply uncomfortable. And she would not have had it any other way - she was after all committed to writing for women. Why should she go out her way to mollify those she held responsible for perpetuating sexual violence, systematic discrimination and gendered inequalities? On the other hand, the uncompromising positions she assumed always proved problematic for more mainstream feminists, for whom women's liberation is bound up with a host of other progressive movements (not least anti-racism and the labour movement).

The most troubling aspect of Daly's philosophy as far as radical politics are concerned was her essentialism (which she dubbed her quintessentialism), a position that cast all women as stoic sufferers of injustice and all men as misogynists in on a patriarchal conspiracy - a conceptualisation a million miles away from the actually existing, complex and decentered reality of how women's oppression works. Such a position informs lesbian separatism - both in terms of building a feminist movement (independently of not just men, but also heterosexual/bisexual women and women who advocate coalition building - of so-called "malestream" feminism), and, disgracefully, alibis transphobia in the women's movement. In her Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, she apparently refers to trans people as "Frankensteinian" and living in a "contrived and artifactual condition". Daly also supervised Janice Raymond's PhD dissertation. Published as the notoriously transphobic The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male, which in all seriousness contends that transwomen are patriarchal agents in the women's movement and whose existence "rapes" women's bodies. Unfortunately, such absurd and reactionary views tend to swill about the feminist blogosphere still, inflaming bitter disputes wherever they rear their ugly heads.

Despite this, it would be a mistake to reject Daly's views outright. In works like The Church and the Second Sex and Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, Daly flails the promotion and perpetuation of patriarchal norms and values at the heart of Catholic theology. She writes "a woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan." She also elaborated a philosophical position not dissimilar to vulgar Marxist accounts that oppose class consciousness to false class consciousness. According to her Wikipedia entry:

She created a dualistic thought-praxis that separates the world into the world of false images that create oppression and the world of communion in true being. She labeled these two areas Foreground and Background respectively. Daly considered the Foreground the realm of patriarchy and the Background the realm of Woman. She argued that the Background is under and behind the surface of the false reality of the Foreground. The Foreground, for Daly, was a distortion of true being, the paternalistic society in which she said most people live. It has no real energy, but drains the “life energy” of women residing in the Background. In her view, the Foreground creates a world of poisons that contaminate natural life. She called the male-centered world of the Foreground necrophilic, hating all living things. In contrast, she conceived of the Background as a place where all living things connect.

Another element to Daly's philosophy is self-actualisation - a celebration of women casting off the shackles of patriarchy and becoming empowered free agents. In an interview with EnlightenNext magazine, she says "... I don't think about men. I really don't care about them. I'm concerned with women's capacities, which have been infinitely diminished under patriarchy. Not that they've disappeared, but they've been made subliminal. I'm concerned with women enlarging our capacities, actualizing them. So that takes all my energy ... I'm trying to name something that can only be recognized by women who are seizing back our power. But the words have been stolen from us—even though perhaps they were originally our words—they're our words, but they've been reversed and twisted and shrunken. I see myself as a pirate, plundering and smuggling back to women that which has been stolen from us." You get a sense of this from her own short biography and statements like "courage is like -- it's a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. It's like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging." Judging by the comments left on her obituaries, this part of her philosophy has been a positive influence on the lives of some of her readers.

The legacy Daly bequeaths feminism is more complicated and mixed than an assessment based solely on her provocative position-taking.

Sunday, 27 December 2009

Decoding Dan Brown

By way of prefacing his latest book, The Lost Symbol, under the heading 'Fact' Dan Brown writes "In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today. Its cryptic text includes references to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground. The document also contains the phrase "It's buried out there somewhere." All organizations in this novel exist, including the Freemasons, the Invisible College, the Office of Security, the SMCC, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real."

The Lost Symbol follows the Dan Brown formula to a tee. Robert Langdon, his cryptographic protagonist of Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code has to unlock a series of codes on a masonic pyramid to find the location of secret, buried knowledge while avoiding the CIA and the attentions of a baddie determined to use that knowledge for nefarious purposes. But is Dan Brown seriously suggesting the protagonists, rituals, paranormal phenomena, conspiracies and magicks that weave the fabric of his novel together into an undemanding page turner actually exist? Or is he merely fibbing for dramatic effect? Either way, thanks goodness people like Tony Robinson are selflessly prepared to make documentaries exploring the book's main themes and setting us on the straight and narrow.

Well, actually, Tony Robinson (who my late Granddad always referred to as "that little shit") has made a complete pig's ear of the job. Decoded: Dan Brown's Lost Symbol sets itself three tasks: to learn whether the Freemasons do harbour secret ancient knowledge; if the USA is a grand masonic experiment (and by extension, does the architecture and layout of Washington DC embody masonic themes?); and lastly if so-called 'noetic science' (the study of the paranormal) is a goer.

To say the documentary is pretty thin gruel is to convey it a substance it didn't have. He asks Nigel Brown, the general secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England if they are the keepers of ancient wisdom. Of course, the answer is no but we do learn masons do roll up a trouser leg as part of one of their initiation rituals. Seemingly satisfied, it's then over to the states to meet with Akram Elias, a mason of the 33rd degree, to see if the American lodge possesses any secrets. If there is, Elias is keeping mum. Instead he prefers to go on (and on) about the masonic influence on the USA's founding fathers, such as the relationship between key phrases in the Declaration of Independence and masonry (apparently "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has something to do with the emulation of nature, which goes down a storm at your local lodge).

Following Dan Brown's suggestion that Washington DC has masonic symbolism concealed in its layout, that little shit gets all excited when he identifies exploding stars and pentagrams in Pierre L'Enfant's street plan. Unfortunately it all proves rather short lived when it is pointed out similar shapes can be read into any street map. Ah, but what about the masonic symbols, such as the pyramid and capstone containing the all-seeing eye on the nation's currency? How about the recurrence of the number 13, and how mason is spelled out on the dollar bill?. All of which can be explained without referring to conspiracies - for instance the masonic iconography draws from a common well of symbolism current in the intellectual circles of the 18th century, and 13 is nothing more mystical than a reference to the founding states of the USA.

The final part of Robinson's journey is a look at noetic "science". In the book, Katherine Solomon (the female protagonist) has been beavering away in a secluded corner of the Smithsonian Institute to prove that ESP, telekinesis, life after death, etc. are real - and the story line makes clear she has solid scientific evidence supporting the existence of each. Rather than poo-pooing this completely, Robinson meets a self-described parapsychologist and has a go at trying to influence a random number generator with the power of thought. Predictably he gets nowhere. But rather than pouring scorn on noetics he umms and aahs about the science, saying we're only in the foothills of serious investigation into the paranormal. So much for rationalism.

By the end of the programme, Tony Robinson is almost incredulous that Dan Brown could have "enhanced" the conspiratorial creds of the masons, has been a mite economical with the imprint of masonry on Washington DC, and has exaggerated the extent to which science has proven the existence of the human soul. This is all very silly, after all did Robinson not read the back of the title page? "This is a work of fiction ... relationship to persons living and dead ..." etc.

Surrendering to the hype surrounding Brown's evocation of conspiranoid anxieties completely misses the point of The Lost Symbol. Leaving aside the actual existence of masonry as a mutual back-scratching club for aspiring middle class types and the rich and powerful, first and foremost Brown's concern is producing another semi-supernatural thriller that will bankroll the Brown brand for another couple of hundred million. But ultimately, like its predecessor, Symbol is a work of theology. Time and again we are forced to reflect on the religious mysteries Brown attributes to the masons - the idea that God is not apart from the human race but resides in each of us, that we were created equal to God, that apotheosis - the transformation of human to God - is a potential lying dormant in each of us. These are the secrets masonry wants to keep to itself (because the masses are "not ready") and it's this apotheosis the baddie seeks - if only he can find and inscribe the eponymous lost symbol onto his body. This is an 'enlightened' theology which puts cultivation of the self (in terms of intellectual pursuits) at its heart. By worshipping the self, one also worships God.

Of course there's nothing innovative or new about this - you can find similar in a million and one books about the healing powers of crystals, the divinities of sex, how to commune with the dead, and other forms of spiritual self-improvement. It might annoy the proponents of organised religion of all varieties, but ultimately it is the kind of spiritual belief most in tune with our highly individuated times. Where Dan Brown excels is making this theology appear fresh, radical and exciting when in fact it's old hat and utterly banal.

Saturday, 27 June 2009

Idolaters, Fornicators, Murderers ... Repent!

After doing regular Socialist Party stalls on Saturday mornings for a while, you get to know who the local mad heads are. Sometimes the entertainment is provided by a goggle-eyed charity joke book seller who approaches the great Potteries public with the line "I'm not a weirdo!" Or by a woman who often drops by our stall who credits Stoke SP for getting her laser eye treatment sorted on the NHS(!). We get the occasional fool who thinks things would have been better off under Hitler - cue much firm but patient explanation. There's another lad who drops by and insists on signing all our petitions stretching right back to our solidarity work with the Burslem 12. And from time to time a Workers' Power supporter tries to sell us a copy.

Unfortunately, our favourite devil-dodgers, Park Evangelical did not grace Hanley with their saintly presence today. But this isn't to mean souls weren't saved! That cross was bourn aloft by a solitary middle-aged woman who doled out fundamentalist Christian leaflets with meek abandon. And we're talking fundamentalist with a capital F here. She is to Park Evangelical what the cpgb-ml is to the Communist Party.

While reading her leaflet I was struck by a stark similarity between it and much ultra-left propaganda - neither pay any attention to framing their ideas intelligently or relating them to existing (religious, political) consciousness.

But I was so taken with her uncompromising message (and grammar!) I couldn't resist preserving the leaflet's text for all eternity. Behold!

ULTIMATE
Time is running out on you
REPENT

Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. No one knows the date, month or year this world was created, no one knows the ending.

Gen.1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Rev.1 verse 8: I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the ending. Repent.
Rev 20: God has appointed a day in which he is going to judge the world, all nations.

What God is going to judge you for is sin. Stealing, lies, racism, adulterous fornication, idolatries, evil thoughts, murderers, drug users and pushers, lustful and rejecting Jesus Gods gift to you. Occult involvement such as fortune telling, witchcraft and palm readings. Repent or perish the choice is yours. This is a warning Jesus is coming soon. Repent. The animals in Noah's days went into the Ark and were safe, run to Jesus for safety because he is the only one that can save you. It does not matter what you have done for the love of God is more than your sins. He is waiting for you with open heart to receive you. Turn to him before it is too late. Time is running out on you. Repent.

You cannot say you have not been warned on the judgment day. Repent.

Thursday, 18 June 2009

The Curious Silence of Political Islam

Dave Osler earlier noted how some sections of the left are all sixes and sevens over the events unfolding in Iran. I don't know why this should be so surprising. The far left has long standing strategic differences over the Middle East. But what is really strange is the unanimity of response from the various strands of political Islam resident in Britain.

Let me start with the definition of political Islam. I understand it in a broad sense, as political movements that draw on Islam to meet their objectives. Applied to the British context this includes relatively innocuous organisations such as the Muslim Association of Britain, who aim to integrate British Muslims into the country's political and cultural mainstream while promoting Islamic teachings. It would also include the to be re-launched Al-Muhajiroun, who campaign for an Islamic UK state. In other words, political Islam encompasses movements right across the spectrum. It should not be confused with Islamism, which denotes a particular strand of political Islam that simultaneously treats the religion as a political philosophy.

It would be reasonable to assume organisations of political Islam would have something to say about the situation in Iran. I know if I was a young Muslim I would be interested to hear the opinion of organisations that claim to represent my interests or would like to recruit me. I'm pretty sure the musings of the local Imam - if he touched on the crisis in the Islamic Republic at all - would not be enough. So what are these groups saying?

Let's have a look at the more mainstream sites. The British Muslim Forum apparently aims to represent the political thoughts of Muslims resident in the UK and boasts of being the largest Muslim umbrella organisation in the country with 600 affiliates. Alas its not doing a great job of representing any kind of thought - at least on the internet - as the website has not been updated since February. The Muslim Association, the pressure group some on the ultra-left think is "Islamofascist" because of its links to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood doesn't have much to say either. Its last news item is Obama's speech in Cairo at the beginning of the month (the MB website is no better - seems every topic under the sun gets a look in ... apart from Iran). The story is the same for the Islamic Society of Britain, The Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, and Progressive British Muslims (another organisation who, online at least, looks like it's gone into abeyance).

What about the extremes? Over the years the mainstream political establishment have been pressuring so-called community leaders to aggressively stamp out the extremists and Islamists. The silence of the mainstream offers the head bangers an ideal opportunity, doesn't it? You would think ... but Hizb ut-Tahrir - an organisation no one could accuse of being idle - hasn't got a thing to say. US designs on Pakistan? Check. The global recession? Check. Revolution in Iran? Nope.

In fact, the only organisation that does is the two man show, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. They carry a couple of snippets from Youtube, but don't really offer any opinion on the events.

This is indeed a curious silence on the part of British political Islam. Could it be for sectarian reasons? Or is it more likely they are utterly bewildered by events?

Sunday, 7 June 2009

Branch Meeting: The Iranian Revolution

It was back to business as usual at this Thursday's branch meeting of Stoke Socialist Party after the frenetic campaigning of the European election. Brother G commanded our attention with a lead off on the Iranian revolution.

He kicked things off with a potted history of Iran for the century up to the 1979 revolution. The country emerged from the high colonial period of the late 19th/early 20th centuries independent, but suffered constant interference and distortion at the hands of Tsarist Russia and the British. Against a backdrop of tribal chaos, uprisings and deep divisions in the elite, modern Iran could be said to begin with the assumption of power by Reza Shah. Backed by Britain he had consolidated his autocratic rule by 1925 and spent the next 16 years developing Iran's infrastructure and industrial base. Unfortunately, the Shah's attempt to preserve neutral status during the Second World War fell foul of Allied plans. With Reza ousted and his son installed as a puppet, the country was temporarily partitioned between the USSR and Britain for the duration of the war.

In 1951 Mohammed Mossadegh assumed the prime ministerial office and won mass support after he moved to nationalise Iran's significant oil industries. This was not to the taste of the British or the Americans - they collaborated with the Shah to dismantle the constitutional monarchy and had him removed in a coup two years later, replacing the nascent liberal democracy with the autocracy of the pre-war years. Like his father's regime the new order was repressive but made significant strides forward in its development. This culminated in a six-point reform plan in 1963 (under pressure from the Kennedy White House), which, among other things, enshrined rights for women. This 'white revolution' was opposed by the growing Islamist movement led by Rudollah Khomeini (later Ayatollah) who denounced the reforms and was later forced into exile.

Winding forward to the end of the seventies, by then the Shah's regime was in trouble. Development had encouraged large scale rural-urban migration, which proved combustible as the world economy slid into crisis in the early part of the decade. Under the pressure of a massive strike wave the Shah dissolved parliament and released political prisoners - which was a crucial error. These intelligentsia managed to bring about an alliance of striking workers, radicalised Muslims and nationalists that went on to depose the Shah. This was not a Muslim uprising per se, but rather the founding of the Islamic republic came after power struggles among the victorious revolutionary elite.

Moving on to the discussion, P admitted his knowledge of Iran was extremely limited and referred to the treatment of the revolutionary period in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. As the daughter of well to do and well connected parents, her biographical tale relates a convincing sense of the post-revolutionary struggles and the subsequent crackdown on the communist party (the Tudeh) and any other element opposed to the nascent theocracy. P also recalled a few articles he'd read in the past about the Tudeh - while it is true it had borne the brunt of the Shah's repression (its leading cadre were mostly dead, imprisoned or exiled) the party's political strategy was hampered by a misunderstanding of the class relationships in Iranian society. It believed the so-called democratic uprising against the Shah should be led by nationalist and "objectively progressive" Islamist parties who would complete the unfulfilled "democratic tasks" of Iranian capitalism, and then it would be the turn of the organised working class to make its mark. The Tudeh did not have the leadership of the revolution to begin with, but being wedded to a strategy that conceded it to other classes doomed it to the role of a subordinate partner that could be easily disposed of after it had outlived its usefulness.

For A the outcome of a revolutionary process cannot be determined in advance. It all depends on the class forces underpinning revolution and counterrevolution, and a successful revolution from a socialist point of view is extremely difficult without a revolutionary party being in the mix. In Iran's case the revolution opened in 1978 after and accumulation of contradictions exacerbated by the oil crisis. In its opening phase it was the mass of the workers who moved into action, many of them led by Tudeh activists. This movement grew by leaps and bounds and in some areas threw up embryonic workers' councils and administrative committees - but unfortunately a decisive workers' leadership was lacking. This enabled capital via the medium of the Islamic parties to win revolutionary momentum, put down the workers' movement and carry out their reactionary programme.

Brother F said Iran shows how an unsuccessful revolution can lead to the strengthening of the ruling class. But it is also demonstrates Islam is no more a barrier to class consciousness than any other religion. The popular tendency to see Islamic countries as swivel-eyed jihadist monoliths overlooks that fact that each are capitalist countries with the same basic set of class relationships and struggles undergirding their national and cultural peculiarities. The founding of the Islamic republic was the triumph of the counterrevolution within the revolution, but nevertheless there are positives to be taken from it.

A outlined a couple of these. The revolution demonstrated to the whole world of the latent power the working class possesses everywhere. Despite repression how the Shah was toppled by the labour movement remains well within living memory, providing a rich vein of militancy the working class can draw on as it enters into battle with the mullahs.

Part of the problem for Iranian leftists, said G, is how an otherwise unstable regime is constantly strengthened by the moves of outside actors. Iraq's abortive invasion of Iran in 1980 served only to strengthen Khomeini. Likewise the crude sabre-rattling of the Bush years enabled the government to divert attention from increasingly serious domestic problems. By way of contrast Obama's commitment to hands off diplomacy could more effectively undermine the mullahs than any raft of sanctions or UN-sponsored denunciations.

But unfortunately, P noted, there is a tendency among some on the revolutionary left to wear anti-imperialist blinkers when it comes to Iran. George Galloway, for example, is eloquent in his denunciations of US and UK policy in the Middle East and towards Iran, but that's where it ends. He is studiously silent about the character of the Islamic republic and its internal struggles. Likewise with the Socialist Workers' Party and their consistent opposition to the affiliation of Hands Off the People of Iran to Stop the War, seemingly on the grounds that criticising the Iranian is tantamount to lining up with the US and UK. Socialists should go beyond putting a plus wherever our masters place a minus and analyse Iran as it is. In P's opinion Iran's regime now resembles Imperial Germany prior to the First World War - an authoritarian and unelected state bureaucracy with liberal democratic window dressing and limited political freedoms. Very far from ideal but certainly not the jihadist-talibanite hell the media portrays it as. Concluding, A felt the job of socialists in Britain is not to cheer lead the Iranian government nor line up with pro-war liberals but call for and do our best to support independent workers' organisations in the country.

Sunday, 8 March 2009

Teaching Max Weber

Of the 'big three' founding fathers of sociology, Max Weber (pictured) was definitely the most miserable. If he thought to preface his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with a few gags then perhaps more of my Thursday students would have persevered with their reading. Does this explain why Slavoj Žižek appears so sexy to so many?

I digress. The purpose of the week's seminar was to bring out the basics of Weber's method and then examine the thesis that protestantism, and Calvinism in particular played a key role in the formation of capitalism. These were my batch of questions for the students:

1) What is Weber's 'Ideal Type' method? Can you think of any examples?

2) What are the main features of a) The Protestant Ethic, and b) The Spirit of Capitalism?

3) For Weber, what differentiated capitalism from preceding modes of production? Why did it develop in Western Europe after the Reformation? Why not in other well developed societies such as China?

4) Do you think there are any problems with Weber's thesis?

5) Despite criticisms do you think Weber's arguments could be useful for understanding contemporary capitalism?

6) What criticisms could Marxists make of Weber's account? Do Marx and Weber offer incompatible views? Whose analysis of capitalism is superior?

Except for committed Weberians and Marxists the subject matter was never going to ignite the passions, and so it proved with this session. But nevertheless Weber's thesis did come in for a bit of a kicking over his value judgements concerning what did and what didn't count as rational action (was it really irrational for Catholic aristocrats to invest in piracy, slavery and wars?); whether you can read off actors' actions from religious prescriptions; and if the documents Weber used to underwrite his argument. His disjointed "tick box" schema of capitalism's emergence was compared with Marx's emphasis on class struggle to explain the breakdown of West European feudalism.

The next session will be looking at the emergence of nationalism and democratisation - whether the nation is an invention of capitalism or has roots in pre-capitalist times, what social forces have historically driven the struggle for democracy, and the relevance of both today. With a nice cross section of political views in all my classes - from UKIP to anarchism - I hope on this occasion the fur will fly ...

Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Filipinas and Catholicism in Israel

It's high time some sociology was written about around here! Today's lunch time sociology seminar at Keele heard from Claudia Liebelt with her paper, 'The Mama Mary of the White City's Black Underside: Reflections on the Filipina 'Block Rosary Crusade' in Tel Aviv, Israel'. This was an exploration of religion and identity in the growing Filipina domestic worker community in Israel (the majority of whom are young women). Claudia spent several months with these women documenting their lives, daily rituals and practices.

The diaspora of Philippine nationals is somewhere around the eight million mark, and is scattered all over the globe. The majority are female and a good proportion of them are well educated, but they tend not to fill highly skilled occupations. Instead the fall into low-waged work that is often insecure and can involve their abuse by unscrupulous employers. In Israel underpayment, passport confiscation, and harassment by immigration officials along with gruelling workloads is the lot of many Filipina migrants. But they are not passive vessels content to let the daily grind wash over them. They have developed strategies of coping and resistance, which, for the group studied by Claudia, was very heavily coloured by religious belief.

The Philippines were ruled by Spain from the mid 1560s to 1898, when it was ceded to the USA after its defeat in the Spanish-American war. Over the 300 year period the archipelago was drawn under a unitary authority and was more roundly developed than Spain's other colonial possessions. Waves of missionaries were drawn to the islands, who in their turn established a network of educational and medical institutions. This way Catholicism was able to strike down very deep roots - today some 81 per cent still list that as their religious affiliation (according to the CIA World Factbook), which is remarkable considering Islam reached those shores three centuries prior to Magellan's expedition.

Many commonplace religious practices are not necessarily 'officially' sanctified, which is the case with the block rosaries. For the group studied here, this was the primary manifestation of their belief. The workers live in the southern districts of Tel Aviv, typically in three-room flats occupied by up to 10 people (this overcrowding is relieved only by workers spending much of their weeks at the employers' homes). Their statuette of the Virgin Mary ("Mama Mary") travels from home to home, taking with it the block rosary prayer meet. The meets themselves are very crowded affairs. Upwards of 25 people can show up. When they enter, they pay their respects to Mama Mary, who is now placed prominently on a home made altar alongside other iconography and paraphernalia. Once everyone has entered the meeting and settled down, the prayers begin. Typically they pray for their families, the health of their employers, safe travel, and the overcoming of their problems and difficulties. The prayer leader then reads an extract from a holy text, passes around the rosary beads, and follows this with a reading from the lives of Mary and Jesus. And it proceeds over and over again, finally ending with a farewell prayer to Mama Mary. Now the prayers are over the workers can help themselves to the generous buffet and share news and gossip. The leader of the group has a link to the community of Catholics in Tel Aviv, and shares parish news and upcoming events.

As befitting an icon, a certain life is attributed to Mama Mary. Ever since the statue was acquired by the group (September 2007 on), her "moods" have been the subject of group speculation. For example, on one occasion 'Gina' dropped the statue and broke something on its leg. Afterwards she herself experienced leg pains until it was fixed. Likewise miracles are acknowledged as the work of Mama Mary. One woman who had spent seven years in Israel had been having trouble with her daughter, who remained behind. She had sent back $1,000 payable to a recruiter who was going to find her daughter work overseas. However, once the money had been handed over the daughter had changed her mind, having fallen in love with a local boy. She prayed to Mama Mary that she would again change her mind and agree to work in Italy and, on this occasion, her prayer came true. As thanks she gave the statue an embroidered coat that it would wear during its procession through Tel Aviv's neighbourhoods.

For those familiar with Philippine processions as busy evangelising affairs may be surprised to find their analogues in Tel Aviv are just the opposite. The procession from one flat to the next is low key and eschews attention, preferring to stick to the dark back alleys of the city (if the next destination is beyond walking distance, or, the weather isn't suitable, then it will take a minibus). In one sense, in their eyes these processional activities sacralise their urban space, one which many of them liken to the latter day Gomorrah in the Holy Land. But the main effect is inward, on the members of the block rosary themselves.

The Filipina workers are from all corners of the Philippines, but what they do have in common from the outset is their religious belief and gender. Mama Mary gives them a focus to gather around, a means of tying together their disparate experiences, and form a solidarity against what could otherwise be an atomised existence. Hosting Mama Mary is a privilege as it blesses the home and the hosts it resides in, but more than that it is also an icon underwritten by nostalgia - prayer meetings offer an opportunity to collectively reflect on the homes and families left behind, which is assisted by the food made available at the buffets. It provides a meaning for being in Israel beyond the need for money and confers a religious value on their care-giving work - as Mama Mary looks after and pities the women, so they too pity their charges, at the same time viewing their work as a sacrifice of their youth so others may benefit. Indeed, it can be read as a way of transmitting patriarchal values in a social space inhabited solely by women.

As far as I was concerned, this type of study shows how useful sociology can be for those of us involved in socialist politics. As a case study it has its own set of unique properties, but there are generalities that can be distinguished that are common to most migrant groups - namely the importance attached to a particular set of rituals and practices that confirms the validity of their selves to themselves, and generates a sense of "we-ness" that gives them the strengths to face the challenge of the social contexts confronting them. These solidarities do not necessarily have to be religious, but in most cases of migrant populations in Western Europe, they have tended to assume that character. If socialists want to work with and influence these groups then it must be done with tact and sensitivity.

Wednesday, 7 January 2009

Science and Islam

These days, religion and science aren't thought of as easy bedfellows, but as a new three-part series on BBC Four demonstrates, this hasn't always been the case. In Science and Islam, prof. Jim Al-Khalili demonstrates the intimate bond that once existed between the development of science and the rising power of Islam. And along the way he helpfully (if unwittingly) demolishes some myths that have grown up around Islam.

Between the 9th and the 12th centuries, the Islamic world experienced its own scientific enlightenment. By the time of Muhammad's death in 632, Islam had spread through conquest across the Arabian peninsula. By 750 it stretched from the Pyrenees to the Indus. In 762, Baghdad was founded as the capital of the empire on major trade routes running from east and west. It was also around this time that the empire began to rationalise its bureaucracy. According to Al-Khalili the way it tried to avoid the centrifugal forces nibbling at the extremities was by making Arabic the standard, official language. By coincidence, the intimate relationship between Arabic and the Qur'an made the language well-suited to its task.

One of the key instructions regarding the Qur'an is that as the word of God, its text must be meticulously preserved. As a set of religious instructions it needed to be as clear as possible to avoid problems of misinterpretation and understanding. The injunction that each Qur'an be copied clearly, carefully and without changes made written Arabic a precise script. Therefore it was well suited for the language of imperial administration. But its adoption as the empire’s official tongue had the happy unintended effect of providing a common and precise language for its scattered scholastic communities. Administrative rationalisation allowed the geographically isolated savants of Islam to correspond without linguistic barriers getting in the way. As time passed these circles of correspondents circulated ideas and developed new discoveries and ways of thinking, wealthy patrons and the Caliph got involved for their own reasons, such that the Islamic world went through a renaissance of its own.

Medicine was a focus of much of this scientific activity. In the Hadith, the collection of Muhammad’s sayings and deeds, he reportedly said “God did not send down disease without sending a cure”. There were then powerful religious reasons that made medicine a worthwhile scientific pursuit. The empire, bordering Europe and India and on the overland trade routes to China drew on the medical traditions of all three, as well as the herbalism that was (and to an extent, still is) the preserve of Arabic women. Islamic medicine also developed hospitals, introduced the pharmacy and developed tools and masks for surgery. It was also the first to make use of anatomical drawings as surgical aids. The synthesis of traditions and the new practices culminated in Ibn Sina's 1025 encyclopedia, The Canon of Medicine. This landmark work established principles such as diagnosis and cure, and formed the basis of medical knowledge that lasted until the early 19th century.

With the system of patronage, valuable discoveries were made in the course of meeting the ruler’s demands. One achievement of Islamic science, only recently acknowledged by modern scholarship, was its translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics into Arabic some 1,000 years prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. The historian, Ibin Washiyya managed this by realising that the Coptic alphabet, which as a living contemporary language could easily be translated into Arabic, was in fact a descendent of these hieroglyphs. Unfortunately the caliph who sponsored the project was disappointed. Egyptian tombs and stone carvings yielded no hoped-for magical and alchemical secrets.

Islam’s contribution to mathematics is probably its best-known contribution to science. From India Muslim scholars took the numbers system (which, as we saw, was then introduced into mediaeval Europe), and from ancient Greece came geometry. But they did more than just preserve these achievements. They built on them. The noted Persian scholar, al-Khwārizmī, combined the two and opened an entirely new continent of mathematics: algebra. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this scholarship. At a stroke principles of abstract mathematical thought independent of numbers were established with innumerable applications. Equally crucial was the introduction of the decimal point to denote fractions of numbers.

By the end of Science and Islam, Al-Kalili concluded that the great achievement of science’s relationship with Islam was confirming its independence as a mode of thought from religious and local/cultural traditions. Science wasn’t essentially Islamic. Neither was it essentially Indian, Greek or Chinese. It was a synthesis of all these sources. Without this synthesis and the discoveries Islamic scholars built upon it, the subsequent renaissance and enlightenment in Western Europe that came centuries later may never have happened, or at least proceeded at a much slower pace.

But importantly for today, the role Islam played in the history of science demonstrates it is no more barbaric or anti-intellectual than any other major religion. It conclusively disproves the euro-centric and racist contention that nothing of consequence happened outside of Europe that caused it to rise to global prominence from the 16th century onwards. In short, without the Arabic contributions to science modern Europe would look very different to the one we have today.

The next two episodes will be broadcast on BBC Four at 9pm on the 12th and 19th January.

Tuesday, 5 August 2008

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

As American culture settled down to the country's role as international arbiter in the decade-long interregnum between the final collapse of the Soviet Union and the attacks of September 11th, it was a culture coming to terms with having had a key principle of its fixity knocked away. The world could no longer simply be divided into black and white. The evil empire had lost and the free world had won. With the passing of the USSR and the emergence of a world order dominated by American power, the paranoia once directed against a clear identifiable enemy turned in and against itself. America knew something out there was going to get it, but what would it be? Could its friends possibly its enemies? And what motives could possibly drive their hostility? Are they misguided or do they have a firm agenda?

This anxiety was reflected time and again in the leading science fiction cult shows of the period. On the surface Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were traditional-style conflicts of goodies vs baddies, but picking through the shows' narratives reveals a more complex picture. The Shadows of Babylon 5 were not interested in conquest and domination. They were extreme social Darwinists, believing that war and conflict between alien races wheedled the weak out from the strong and boosted the quality of the galaxy's biological stock. Deep Space Nine eventually got a story arc going about subversion, invasion and war between the Federation and its allies and the shape-shifting Dominion. But the latter weren't in the game for a simple power grab. Theirs was a "defensive" offensive war against "the solids" they believed would persecute them. Both shows had bucket loads of subterfuge, enemy agents, shifting alliances and a dose of paranoia. The space stations they drew their titles from were the rocks of the shows. The waves of great events broke against them but they remained eternal and unchanging. No matter what happened they would win through in the end, just like Uncle Sam.

Warning: Spoilers

In this regard The X-Files is the archetypal 1990s cult show. FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate a bizarre world of unexplained Forteana and alien-related conspiranoia. Adversaries come and go, switching allegiances, disappearing and reappearing. Conspiracies are found to have conspiracies within them. There are no fixed points in the X-Files universe, apart from the bond Mulder and Scully establish between themselves.

It is perhaps because The X-Files cuts against the grain of the contemporary cultural zeitgeist that explains the relatively poor box office receipts for the new film, The X-Files: I Want To Believe. That, and it not being a particularly fantastic picture. Unlike the previous film, which indulged the show's black oil/little grey aliens conspiracy, this is a stand alone addition to the X-Files canon akin to the monster-of-the-week staple of the series.

Scully, now working as a medical doctor at a Catholic hospital is approached by the FBI desperate to get back in touch with Mulder. The agent in charge of the investigation, Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet), requires his "expertise" in solving what would have been classed as an x file. One of their agents has gone missing from her home, and the only lead they have are the visions of a convicted paedophile priest, Father Joseph (Billy Connolly, himself a survivor of child abuse). His visions lead the FBI to a severed arm in the snow and he tells them the agent is still alive. True to form, Mulder embraces Joseph as evidence of psychic powers whereas Scully is far more sceptical (as well as being repulsed by his crimes). Very shortly another woman is abducted and Father Joseph experiences more visions. He leads them to a grisly burial ground of severed limbs from multiple victims. Analysis of the remains gives them a lead to Janke Dacyshyn (Callum Keith Rennie) of an organ courier firm. They learn his civil partner, Franz Tomczeszyn, was one of the boys abused by Father Joseph.

The agents move in to arrest Dacyshyn at his company's offices, but manages to escape, killing agent Whitney in the process. He also leaves behind a grisly package - the frozen severed head of the abducted FBI agent. But the trail picks up again thanks to the animal tranquiliser found in the body parts. Mulder is able to trace it to a store in small town, Virginia and goes along to check the lead. By coincidence, as Mulder is questioning the proprietor Dacyshyn rolls up. Mulder is able to follow him back to his compound (after a brush with Dacyshyn's snow plough, being bulldozed off a rocky outcrop and hypothermia) where he discovers this macabre scheme: Tomczeszyn is dying from lung cancer. Dacyshyn and a team of Russian Doctor Frankensteins are attempting to "cure" this by transplanting Tomczeszyn's head to a succession of (female) bodies. Mulder is overpowered and taken outside to be chopped up, but is rescued by Scully and his old boss at the FBI, Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi). It all ends rather abruptly as the scene moves back to Mulder's house, where he tells Scully that if she were to check the medical records, Father Joseph succumbed to his cancer at the very same moment the blood supply was cut off to Tomczeszyn's disembodied head.

One of the formulas that made The X-Files interesting was Mulder's belief in any old lizard theory that came his way, whereas Scully was always more critical. The irony was Scully's scientific rationality was always tempered by her devout Catholicism, while Mulder was seemingly uninterested in religion, beyond his supernatural peccadilloes. In this film, the subtitle, 'I Want to Believe' is not about Mulder's relationship to the paranormal, it is about Scully's faith. While he does the action Scully gets the character scenes. Her sub-plot sees her as the lead doctor for Christian, a young boy diagnosed with the degenerative and difficult-to-treat brain illness, Sandhoff disease. Despite being a Catholic hospital, the chief administrator, Father Ybarra, believes Christian is beyond help and should be transferred to a hospice. Scully argues there is hope in new complex stem cell-based techniques, but which would be very uncomfortable and may not work. Scully is plagued with indecision. Should she fight for the treatment, even if God (in the shape of Ybarra) has given up on the boy? She puts aside her scepticism and revulsion for Father Joseph and repeatedly asks him for guidance. He blurts out 'don't give up' during one of his psychic trances. She takes this advice and obtains consent from Christian's parents, and the film ends as his final operation is to begin. Scully wants to believe she's doing the right thing but cannot find enough confirmation in her faith. It takes a bland utterance of seemingly supernatural origin for her to continue.

I try not to end on a low note, but some things cannot be passed over without comment. The X-Files comes with some pretty reactionary baggage. To begin with, Scully comes across as the more complex and satisfying character in this story because she is the foil for the conflicts, irresolutions and self-doubts that afflict us all throughout our lives. But is it entirely coincidental that she - a woman - is the one who is tortured by indecision? Especially when Mulder, a man, has no hesitation pursuing his x-file quarry? Her dilemma is only resolved when she turns to Father Joseph, another man. There is also the relationship between Mulder, agent Whitney, and Whitney's partner. As lead investigator Whitney cannot function effectively without being supervised by a man. Her partner, agent Mosley Drummy (Xzibit) is very sceptical of Father Joseph's psychic abilities and would like to see the investigation unfold conventionally. However, it takes Mulder to prevent Whitney being led astray by this black man to put the search for the missing agent on its proper footing.

But by far the worst is the treatment of the homosexual villains at the heart of the plot. If the implication that Father Joseph's sexual abuse was what turned the young Tomczeszyn gay wasn't bad enough, Dacyshyn is committing unspeakable and morally repugnant acts to his partner. I'm sure that is entirely coincidental, of course. But then why are they committed to procuring female bodies to graft Tomczeszyn's head on to? Was Dacyshyn questioning his sexuality? Were the script writers trying to "heterosexualise" their relationship? Or worse, is this a nod toward 19th and 20th century discourses that positioned gay men as women in male bodies? Whatever, this kind of juvenile homophobic rubbish has no place in the cinema of 2008.

Monday, 17 March 2008

What is Britishness?

Defining Britishness is a vexing enterprise. But this was what we attempted to do at tonight's discussion hosted by Keele Against Racism and Fascism. The meeting opened with two short Youtube clips. The first was Real Members of the BNP, a piece featuring Sharon Ebanks (now formerly of that fash parish). She said the BNP were neither left or right, but British. They were the only ones who cared about the working class, and if anything they were more socialist than not (I couldn't resist slipping in a loud snort of derision). They didn't hate other people, but why she asked, do minorities feel the need to celebrate their separate identities? They have the MOBO awards and the Black Police Association, so why can't whites?

This was contrasted with the second clip - an interview by the BBC's Matthew Amroliwala with Mohammed Shaddiq of the Ramadhan Foundation on the 'national day' and oath-swearing controversy. He argued a day set aside for celebrating Britishness is potentially a good idea. It would be an opportunity to celebrate the diversity and inclusivity of British identity and talk about want unifies us all as Britons. But on the other hand the idea of swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen is a bad idea. For all sorts of reasons a large proportion of British people would be unhappy to do so - this traditional institutional embodiment of national unity ironically cuts a divisive figure in the British body politic these days.

Here we have two competing visions - the narrow and exclusive versus the broad and inclusive. This was the starting point for a wide ranging debate on a number of themes. Among the participants was an Algerian student who drew attention to the differences between the national identities of our respective countries. He argued that while different (self-defined) communities are to an extent supported by the state here, Algeria's approach to minorities was similar to that in France - all are citizens of the state, nothing more, nothing less. He suggested this bottom line was basically the case in Britain. If we are to define Britishness, ultimately the only officially delineated commonality is citizenship. Therefore the state is the repository of national identity. To an extent this is true - the state officially promotes an inclusive, bourgeois multiculturalism AND expects/demands minority communities learn and speak English. The new citizenship tests require migrants to learn about so-called British customs, which help determine the outcome of their applications.

But how inclusive can Britishness be? All national identities must exclude someone, they all need an 'other' through which it can be recognised as a nationality. But how this exclusion is realised becomes more problematic the further we move away from the tidy concepts of citizenship. Take values for example - as George Galloway is often fond of noting on his radio show, how is tolerance, individual liberty, democracy and freedom of expression unique to these islands? Can't Danish, Portuguese, German and French national discourse lay equal claim to them? The same is true of negative traits - imperial elitism, bigotry and xenophobia are far from particular to Britain. And to what extent is Britishness itself really a cover for Englishness? Can British people wear kilts and speak Gaelic? Even if you take the very narrow view of Ebanks and her Mein Kampf-inspired rants about blood and soil, her xenophobic nationalism still had enough room for a mixed race woman like herself. Unfortunately we didn't make much headway in beginning to answer these questions.

But there was a fertile discussion of religion. Someone noted how Britain is virtually unique to have members of the clergy sit in its legislature (a distinction it alone shares with the Islamic Republic of Iran), so what place does religion play in British identity? The state has an official religion, but that doesn't stop it from extending its 'official' multiculturalism to religious observance. There is talk of Charles Windsor adopting the title 'defender of faiths' rather than 'defender of the faith' if ever he assumes the throne. But there is also a tacit secularism at work - no one expects politicians, to quote Alastair Campbell, to 'do God'. It seems, generally speaking (and leaving aside Ulster protestants, for whom religion is the bedrock of a highly politicised British identity) liberal tolerance of religion combined with a skeptical/critical attitude toward strong public displays of belief is a central British value. And so it seems this is one streams feeding into contemporary Islamophobia. The idea Muslims are extremists working to turn Britain into a fundamentalist caliphate has a certain popular currency because, as well as tapping into everyday anxieties around immigration and racism, it appears as if Islam demands its adherents act in a way contrary to British religious convention. For example, take Rowan Williams' proposal to incorporate elements of Sharia Law into English civil law. Though a serious secular critique can be mounted of his argument, most of the voices raised against him evoked images of a predatory Islam muscling in on British legal traditions.

Given it was an anti-fascist society hosting the debate it was only a matter of time before the BNP featured in discussion. Throughout the night reference was made to the perceived disenfranchisement of the white working class. There was some controversy whether no platform policies, such as that operated by KUSU, are a help or hindrance in combating the BNP's influence. Some argued from a libertarian position that all arguments should be out in the open. Others correctly pointed out the BNP were not interested in political debates, merely whipping up hostility to their scapegoat of the month. Nor is it exactly appropriate for a labour movement body, which KUSU is (albeit somewhat tenuously), to allow an organisation fundamentally opposed to the hopes and aspirations of that movement a platform within it. However it would be wrong to dismiss all the concerns the BNP articulates as being of no consequence. I pointed out the rise of the BNP and racist/xenophobic ideas do not come out of nowhere - they have real material causes that can be addressed. Fascism is not a moral problem solved through better education. It is a political problem that requires political solutions.

There is a fundamental disconnect between establishment politics and the working class. Whereas the Labour party was perceived to be and was (to an extent) the primary political vehicle of the working class in Britain, this has increasingly not been the case for the last 20 years. I cited the recent school closures in Stoke-on-Trent as a prime example. Labour councillors were given leave to campaign against the mayor's schemes but were nevertheless required to obey the whip when the plans were voted through in full council, which they dutifully did. Taken with a never ending avalanche of cuts and closures it's small wonder large number of white Stokies take the BNP claims to be the party of British workers at face value. In their defence the Labour candidate for the forthcoming election in Longton North said the party was listening and changing, and cited their ousting of the hapless BNP'er Steve Batkin from that seat last year as evidence. Unfortunately this was more the result of NorSCARF and Keele Labour Students getting the core Labour vote out rather than any Damascene conversion to working class politics. And it has to be said the new Longton North councillor showed he was "listening" when he voted for the school closures along with the rest. Only when bourgeois politics take working class people seriously again can it hope to recover its old legitimacy, but there's little sign of that happening.

We never really got close to an agreeable definition of British identity. I put it to the meeting that positive values of liberty and freedom are as British as the imperial legacy of bigotry and intolerance. What socialists need to do is try and annex positive British values to our projects. It's not about reclaiming "our" flag for ours remains deepest red, but used skilfully it can challenge the right's uncontested use of Britishness for their own ends.

Wednesday, 5 March 2008

Confession and Culture

Yesterday's Keele sociology seminar heard a presentation from Siobhan Holohan on the place occupied by the confession in Western cultures. When she was researching the portrayal of deviants and criminals as scapegoats in the media, Siobhan became interested in how the confessional preserved the prevailing structural order. Her presentation looked at the place it has occupied in Western culture, from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Catholicism is associated with the first widespread practice of confession in the West. The power of the church exercised control over its congregations by requiring them to talk about their sins and then throw themselves at the mercy of the priests. Only they, as God's representatives on Earth, had the ability to forgive sinners their transgressions. Thanks to the doctrine of original sin we are of necessity sinners, so we always have something to confess. If we do not, we are a threat, because those who remain silent by not attending confession represented a latent threat to structural control. According to Mike Hepworth and Bryan S. Turner's 1982 book, Confessions: Studies in Religion and Deviance, confessional themes do occur in other forms of religious belief. For example, some strands of Islam allow a role for confession, but forgiveness is dispensed only by Allah.

As the centuries passed the confession was secularised. Foucault showed how central the confession was for the institutional imposition of rules on minds and bodies. Just as the metaphor of Bentham's Panopticon is a useful way of understanding how inmates in total institutions regulated their behaviour (i.e. the idea they could unknowingly be subject of the authorities gaze at any time 'disciplined' inmates conducts), the confession was another 'technology' for constituting disciplined subjects. As subjects confess their deviance/crime it legitimates the institutions set up to regulate them - they produce a 'truth' requiring a series of professions to interpret, specialise, and advise on the nature of such truths.

In post-Christian West European societies the redemptive quality of the confession has long been a central feature of legal systems, and silence can be seen as a tacit acceptance of guilt. For example the current police caution in Britain grants suspects the right to silence, but at the same time they are informed this silence could harm their defence later down the line. If however you do confess then the court system - depending on the nature of the offence - sentencing will tend to be lighter, and continued acts of contrition while inside are taken as evidence of rehabilitation. Indeed, the government's mania for trying to increase detention without charging all the way up to 90 days is based on expert advice that the longer a suspect is held, the more likely they are to own up to their charge.

Now the confession has popular culture in its grip. "Therapeutic" talk shows, kiss and tells, ghost-written autobiographies, the media has fetishised the confession and it has become an everyday pasttime. The confession still regulates, but it also sets us free. For example, Jade Goody's attacks on Shilpa Shetty in last year's Celebrity Big Brother saw a public outpouring of anger. As a result she has publicly apologised and confessed her sins in as many media outlets as have been open to her, and now she is as much a glossy/gossip magazine regular as she was before the January 2007 evenements. Other high profile beneficiaries of the redemptive qualities of confession are Bill Clinton and Hugh Grant - who now holds their sexual indiscretions against them?

Public confession is available to "normal" people too. Reality TV like Big Brother and X-Factor is one outlet for the "lucky" few. But the internet revolution has allowed for all manner of semi-public avenues of confession. Blogs, social networking, forums, and adult chat sites can afford spaces of anonymity where people can confess their innermost thoughts. The question Siobhan ended on why is there still this confessional draw? Why do we need to unburden ourselves? Are they attempts at finding authenticity in an atomised media-saturated society?

Sunday, 16 December 2007

Make Me a Muslim

What can be said for another stab at the increasingly tired genre of reality TV by Channel Four? No doubt some overpaid but under-employed producer at C4 Towers thought a programme exploring Islam could breathe new life into the increasingly cadaverous format. And C4, always willing to stake its claim to 'Britain's most dangerous TV channel' went with the idea and commissioned a three-part series.

The premise of Make Me a Muslim is simple: Imam Ajmal Masroor and three advisors, Dawn, Mohammed, and Suliman, guide a group of volunteers as they try to live as Muslims for three weeks. The four contestants focused on in the first show are there for mixed reasons. Phil because he wants to learn about the Muslim point of view; Kerry wants to see the reactions she'd get dressed in traditional garb; Carla so she can establish a connection with the parents of her lapsed-Muslim partner; and Luke who is fed up of the vacuous hedonism of his life. Of course, it is pure coincidence Phil, Kerry, and Luke are a million miles away from Islamic modes of conduct - Phil is a big drinker, has "strong (i.e. mildly xenophobic) views" and loves hardcore porn; Kerry is a glamour model who loves partying; and Luke is a cross-dressing gay hairdresser.

Almost immediately we are treated to our first row. Moments after Friday prayers, Phil and Carla confront Mohammed and demand to know why "his people" want to impose Sharia law on Britain. The aggressive nature of the hectoring and/or the editing didn't allow Mohammed to get a word in edge ways except to say Sharia is a code of conduct applicable to Muslims only. Reflecting on the argument afterwards, Carla mused that "we need to fight for our rights" and feared we were "making big allowances". We're left guessing why and how this is the case.

With the opening over and the characters established, our spiritual advisors went into the contestants' homes to check their Muslim-friendly credentials. Ajmal noted Islam was not about "taking things away", and then did just that by removing porn, skimpy clothing, pork and bacon, and booze. At this point we begin following Luke and Suliman. Clearly, the friction is around Luke being gay, and Suliman thinks the solution to "curing" him is getting him to dress masculine, avoiding close friendships with women, and engaging him in more manly pursuits - such as Cricket. Mohammed is also enlisted to try and find him a wife. Understandably Luke is not comfortable with this and confronts Suliman about it. We are treated to the view beloved of religious homophobes everywhere: this is divine law; LGBT people "choose" their sexual preference; and the old favourite, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve". Afterwards Luke acknowledges that he won't be able to meet Suliman half way, whereas Suliman feels hopeful a dose of Quranic teaching will "straighten" him out.

Dawn takes Kerry shopping for Islamic dress, explaining how immodest dressing encourages extroversion, while modesty inculcates a humble disposition. Unlike Kerry, who is used to showing her body to make a living, Dawn, explaining why she covers, said "my body is for my husband. I want him to enjoy me, and no one else to enjoy me, because I love him so much". Modesty of dress was the centre of an earlier flare-up, where Mohammed ridiculously states covering protects women whereas skimpy clothing is invites rape. Quite rightly, Carla takes him to task for this locating the blame with the men who commit it. "It should be the men who are forced to wear blindfolds, women should be able to wear what they want".

All the examples above show the problems with Make Me a Muslim. As a show aimed at promoting an understanding of Islam it completely fails. However, it does fit the formula of reality TV like a glove. Slightly unusual people + unfamiliar situations = arguments galore. With this is mind, it's not surprising the Imams recruited for the show are deeply conservative, as they were sure to rub the contestants up the wrong way. The show does Islam a disservice by presenting strict adherence to Sharia law as the only correct interpretation of the Qu'ran. By extension, this sets up all Muslims as backward and alien to liberal and progressive values. In short, Channel Four's tacky race for ratings has presented a gift to Islamophobes, who will only have their prejudices reinforced rather than challenged.

Monday, 15 January 2007

Reasons to be Active – A reply to Dave Osler

Warning: very long post!

The decomposition of the revolutionary left is a depressing fact of our times.

Since the big battles of the 1980s, tens of thousands have passed out of our movement. With no apparent alternative to neo-liberal capitalism some have learned not just to live with the enemy, but to love to it too. Others who fancied themselves Marxist theoreticians retreated into academia, discovered theory for theory’s sake and have since joined the bourgeois choir in praise, or at the very least in the uncritical acceptance of, globalisation. Many more did neither. A few found solace in other forms of radical political activity, but for the vast majority, politics was abandoned to the politicians. It is no surprise that when the class started losing its belief in its capacity to manage its destiny, the revolutionary left declined along with it.

Dave Osler is one of those who stayed the course. Currently a revolutionary without a revolutionary group, he has chosen to put his efforts into the John McDonnell leadership campaign, for want of a better arena of socialist activity. His site is also one of the most read and commented-on sites on the left side of blogland – hundreds of activists and keyboard class warriors regularly log on to see what he has to say.

This is why his recent post on the state of revolutionary politics deserves a response. After summing up the baleful effects of Social Democracy and Stalinism on our movement, he notes;

The far left is more shrivelled, splintered and ineffective than it has been in decades. It has not succeeded in developing social roots, let alone mass membership, in one single country on the planet.

At the root of all this is a sustained erosion of class consciousness and even the most basic levels of class organisation worldwide. Socialist ideology, even in its most distorted forms, is no longer hegemonic in movements of the oppressed.

This is perhaps why there was little working class resistance anywhere to the transformation in the class nature of social democratic parties.

There can be little to dispute with here. The left has come a long way since the old Communist Party could command the support of hundreds of thousands of workers in shop floor struggles. The problem is it’s all been in the wrong direction.

The roots Militant once had in the class have been cut back. A layer of workers may have fond memories of the Militant-led Liverpool City Council but they are of little consequence to the Socialist Party today. It along with the Independent Working Class Association, the Scottish Socialist Party, Solidarity, and Respect only have a very small number of bases. On a planetary scale the outlook is equally as grim. Where Trotskyists had a mass base in the past, in Bolivia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, it was either ruthlessly crushed by the Stalinists or pissed up the wall through incompetent leadership.

Looking at possible radical alternatives to socialism, Dave writes;

In as far as a new anti-capitalism can be said to exist at all – and let’s avoid the elementary mistake of conflating anti-globalisation with anti-capitalism, shall we? – it is on an eclectic ideological basis that dismisses socialism as just another species of ‘productivism’.

The global justice movement (which seems to be a more accurate term for it these days) is an eclectic beast and one a good number of Marxists has had difficulty understanding. It is possibly the most over-hyped radical movement of our time. Indeed can it really be called a movement given the diversity of forces and any lack of overall coherence beyond the notion that deregulated, unfettered capital is a bad thing?

It is easy to dismiss the GJM on this basis, which is precisely what many Marxists have done. This is mistaken in my view. While we in Britain tend only to associate it with carnivalesque displays and smashed-up Maccy D's, it has forged close international links with social movements in the semi-colonial, under-developed, and developing world. These are movements around land rights, water rights, slave labour, poverty and environmental despoliation. In other words they are movements of our class, movements by which it is becoming conscious of its interests independent of and against the predations of capital.

Taking socialist ideas into the GJM is one of the many tasks revolutionaries need to be engaged in. Why this hasn’t been pursued as seriously in the past requires some reflection, but the stakes are too high not to. Failure here does not run the risk of missing out on recruiting one or two middle class kids. Rather it gives those within the GJM – the protectionists, the neo-Keynesians, the UNists, the reformists, the NGO’s, etc. a free run of influencing real mass movements with real roots.

Turning to radical Islam, Dave writes;

There is a certain anti-imperialist content to political Islam. The trouble is, it is a reactionary anti-imperialist content.

Blinkered to the last, large sections of the left automatically consider all forms of anti-imperialism as implicitly progressive, as somehow on how side, and send their delegates to Cairo to seek an alignment with it.

Some of the left have tried to influence radical Islam by uncritically tailing and apologising for it. This has conjured up its mirror image of revolutionaries who display anything from mild antipathy to hysterical disavowal of Muslims who start getting active in politics as Muslims. Surely there is a third way between the two.

Indeed there is. Revolutionary socialists in Britain should extend the hand of friendship to socialist and communist parties in countries where radical Islam is a mass force. We should assist our sisters and brothers in building independent organisations of the class as and when we can (and not just sections of our own ‘internationals’).

With regard to radical Islamic movements themselves, none are monoliths. Neither do they operate in a vacuum. As movements consisting of Muslims from different walks of life, the contradictions of society will find a way of expressing themselves in these movements. Depending on the overall balance of forces some will be more open than others and may seek out allies in the imperialist countries themselves. The SWP didn’t crash the Cairo conference – they were invited. In my opinion this opportunity should have been used to demonstrate why the left are anti-imperialist and push socialist politics. Whether the SWP did this or not I’ll leave for others to judge.

In Britain, there is general agreement we need to win over Muslim sections of our class to socialist politics. Appealing to self-styled community leaders isn’t the answer, and neither is a constant blathering about how backward Islam is. I may not be au fait with my civil rights history but I’m pretty sure sections of the US left didn’t denounce those southern blacks who were motivated to struggle because of their faith. Socialists have to approach Muslims as sensitively as we would any oppressed group – but at the moment space prevents me from elaborating further.

Coming round to his conclusion, Dave notes;

Just to compound matters, the leadership of the remaining Marxist movement is almost to a man and woman far too stupid, far too backward-looking even to make an assessment of the world today and to seek the pathway to political renewal. As far as they are concerned, the old formulae work just fine.

No disagreement here, except to say the Socialist Party’s leadership is utterly perfect. It is the font from which contemporary Marxist wisdom flows ;)

I agree the revolutionary left can be very conservative. Much of what is exciting in Marxist research takes place outside its ranks. Often its literature is dull to the point of brain-numbing. The activities it engages in can be routinist. The culture of the left falls short of the socialist democracy we’re supposed to be the harbinger of.

On the other hand it is this self-same left that has kept the spark of revolutionary socialism alive. Seldom will you find activists as dedicated to the interests of our class, as keen to inflict defeats on our enemy and as willing to undertake the thankless tasks our politics demand. What’s more the conditions of its operation have undergone a significant change. Horizontal lines of communication between socialist activists have proliferated like never before. The ability to wall off memberships North Korean-style is a thing of the past. New leaders schooled in a revolutionary left more used to talking to each other do not have the same investments in the old ways of working as longer term activists do. They can learn from their own experiences that traditional practice fails to connect with our class. They will therefore be more likely to try new methods that will.

The left may have many problems but I firmly believe the seeds of renewal are there. It requires struggle, but then no one said revolutionary politics was an easy ride.

Finally, Dave writes,

There’s just one thing that stops me topping myself. For all the setbacks since the 1970s, global working class still possesses that unique combination of self-interest, capacity and social weight to provide the foundation for a rational, humanist and radical democratic politics.

And maybe - just maybe - enough of the left can somehow sober up in time to realise that if there is hope, it lies with the proles.

Amen to that.

The class now has more social weight and therefore potential power than at any other time in history. It will throw up organisations that represent its interests. It will engage in titanic battles in the years ahead. If the class is to be victorious, if we are to inflict a world historical defeat on capital and usher in the beginnings of a global socialist democracy.

What to do? Socialists in revolutionary organisations have a duty to make them fit for purpose. Those who aren’t should either join them to change them, or work where they think it’s the best place to promote socialist politics. All the time we need to keep talking to one another. The demands of the moment require we share ideas, knowledge and experiences, that the lessons one group or individual draws from their activist experiences be transmitted to others. We have no choice. We either act more cohesively, make ourselves relevant and assist the class in becoming self aware, or we carry on as normal. The choice between socialism and barbarism has never been so stark. We’d better get serious comrades. There isn’t much time left!