A long-standing issue I’ve been wanting to address, when the time is right, when the atmosphere is less feversish, but that time never comes. Now of course it’s a mainstream media topic again, whilst Israel and Iran are also lobbing ordnance at each other, so here goes a first draft, a placeholder. Many parts of this topic have already featured here, but I’ve not pulled together the whole before.
First place to start is from the rights and freedoms end, and secondly to recognise a consistent approach to all religious and secular cultures. Why we call it phobia when it’s Islam and antisemitism when it’s Judaism is historical circumstance, and making this about a choice of words and their definitions isn’t going to cut it. I say that because the party line now is to drop the term Islamophobia and replace it with anti-Muslim-hatred. At least it highlights that hatred is distinct from critique, but it does quite rightly talk of limiting free-speech (wrongly, or not). [Zionism and Palestinians?]
The UN enshrines the freedom of expression, thought and belief including but not only religious belief at the highest level. But freedom of expression is not itself unlimited, whether the topic is religion or otherwise, something I’ve written about many times and captured in my [Rules of Engagement?]. Freedom runs on rails. Having the right to express anything doesn’t mean it is right or appropriate to do so, anywhere, anytime [Flag-shaggers?]. There are rules of civilised discourse involving respect for fellow humans and good faith in the expressed motivation, the why? [Hate Speech?].
Speaking from the position of a free democracy, as opposed to a theocracy, this is about secular humanism, about equalities of rights and freedoms independent of the ideologies of those religions or indeed any “isms” held by individuals and their self-identified religious and/or ethnic cultures. The topic of the diversity of cultures within the given society is front and centre. Multiple cultures without the “ism”. [Kenan Malik?]
The nexus of this collection of knotty issues is in the freedom of expression beyond language and media. The freedom to express religious identity in cultural practice. Freedom of belief and thought – linguistic and cultural – is greatest in private between good-faith consenting adults. It is most limited in public secular contexts, except in public “holy-day” situations in an otherwise secular society. [Misogyny]
In a nutshell: The primary culture and values & laws of the host secular free democratic society sets limits on freedoms of behaviour of any religious or other sub-cultures within it. We need a society that tolerates multiple religious sub-cultures, but not multiculturalism as the culture. Public displays of our sub-cultures need to be discreet and limited. Jews and Muslims in particular flout this limitation in public dress and behaviour. As a secular humanist the public displays and demands of your religious culture offend me.
[Coda – obviously “the” culture of a host society evolves over time and can adopt values and practices of sub-cultures it is exposed to, but only on free, secular, democratic terms. Sub-cultural practices cannot be allowed to undermine the free-democratic apparatus of the secular host.]
Will be updated and expanded [placeholders], but feedback welcome any time.
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