Europe News recently published a translation of an article they entitled "DEMOCRACY AND THE INTERPLAY WITH RELIGION', by the Danish philosopher, Kai Sørlander. The original had first appeared in Danish in Berlingske magazine. Sørlander argues that the fundamental beliefs of Islam are incompatible with the models of secular democracy that have evolved over the past four centuries in nominally or formerly 'Christian' societies.
Sørlander reminds us non-religionists that the New Testament tells us that Jesus said, "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's", "turn the other cheek", "judge not, lest you be judged", "love thy neighbour as thyself", "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth".
Four hundred years ago Christian reformers were using these and other human-centred teachings of Jesus to challenge the secular power of the Roman Church, to separate their religion from the state and initiate the secularization of politics that has led to today's secular democracies. In fact, says Sørlander, '... the Enlightenment is only an expression of secularized Christianity'.
Mohammed gave Muslims very different commandments. Unlike the humble, gentle, loving Jesus of the New Testament, Mohammed was a prodigious religious, political, military and juridical leader. "He prescribed a concrete penal code, and he established some simple differences between men and women, and between Muslims and non-Muslims."
Consequently,
"Whereas a reformation which is rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus leads to secularization of politics, a reformation rooted in the life and teachings of Mohammed leads to an Islamization of politics. It is not because the Islamic world hasn't had its reformation yet that it has not developed into a stable secularized democracy from within. It is because its reforms lead to Wahhabism and thereby Saudi Arabia rather than a secular democracy."
Sørlander's article reminded me of the time back in the 1980s when I began to question the underlying assumptions on which the theories and policies of 'Multiculturalism' were based.
It started when I was appointed by the City Education department to serve as a governor of several schools in a British industrial city. The first surprise was to find myself a governor of a Roman Catholic High School, and at the first Governors' meeting, I found myself sitting with an official from the Education department, two city councillors, three parents, the Headmistress and nine black-suited, dog-collared priests chatting cheerfully in broad Irish accents.
The official took the chair to start proceedings and, surprise, surprise, the most lumpen of the priests was elected Chair. That done, the official became Minute-taker and the Headmistress duly served us all with tea, sandwiches and cakes. Next item, of course, was a blessing on us all and the school and one of the priests duly obliged. I cannot even pretend to pray and as I glanced round at the bowed heads, I was delighted to see the Chair-priest tucking into a cream-cake with an expression of guilty pleasure on his rosy face.
Until this moment, the existence of publicly-funded religious schools in Britain, had never really registered with me, but once I gave the matter some thought, I realised that there were also many Church of England primary and secondary schools in the city, and several Jewish schools as well.
If those religions could have their own publicly-funded schools, then why should there not be publicly funded schools for Muslims, both Shia and Sunni, for Presbyterians, for Hindus and Buddhists, and , why not Quakers, Rastafarians and Mormons? And in a few years, as the students of different religions brought their immature religious fanaticisms into the daily lives of our towns and cities, Britain's future as a secular democracy would be as compromised as, say, that of the Lebanon.
Around that time, several other events started to deepen my interest in the question of 'multi-culturalism'. A friend with non-observant Jewish parents, enrolled his whole family in the local synagogue, and started to call himself "Anglo-Jewish". I was elected Chair of the parent-governors of my daughter's primary school where the other Governors were, from memory two atheists, two Muslims, a Hindu and a Methodist (the head-mistress). Then the City Education department asked me to do some consultancy work with its Multicultural Unit and the Royal Town Planning Institute invited me to join its working party on "Planning for a Multi-cultural Britain'.
As I reflected on what the city and Britain's bureaucrats and politicians were trying to do, I started to argue that the issue of Multi-culturalism should be de-coupled from the need to co-create a healthily Multi-Racial society.For me, "Race" is a biological issue, and no-one should be disadvantaged in any way because of the colour of their skin, or their hair or their eyes, or the shape of their noses or eye-sockets.
The kind of cultural differences I was encountering, however, had to be considered totally separately from differences in race. As today, in Britain in the 1980s, differences in "culture" were more or less directly equated to differences in religion. For me, the fact that the elders and adherents of some religions tended to be darker-skinned than in other religions was totally irrelevant. The crucial questions, in my view, related to their beliefs and value systems and loyalties.
It seemed to me, for example, that, although they were all "white" in racial terms, the beliefs and loyalties of the Catholic priests, born and educated in Ireland, who dominated the governing body of a school in an English city, were likely to be profoundly at odds with my view of the needs of the city, the parents and the students in the late 20th century. The possibility of introducing sex education, for example was rejected out of hand. As to what was being taught in history and science, it was clear that the Vatican's 'sensitivities' were being taken fully into account.
On other occasions, as I looked around other multi-cultural' gatherings, I certainly saw a lot of dark-skinned men but, what was striking was that they were almost all MEN! Moreover, elderly men, with beards and modes of speech - and thought - formed in the the villages of the Punjab, or Bangladesh, or the West Indies or Ireland, and special clothing to denote their cultural identity .
Yet, I was very much an amateur on the question of multi-culturalism and the acknowledged experts simply brushed aside my arguments and continued to equate the idea of a multi-cultural society with one that was healthily multi-racial. Or worse,, when I tried to discuss my concerns with my newly-orthodox Jewish friend, I was accused of being a racist!! End of friendship.
In the early 1980s, I was working as a Research Fellow in the Participation Research Unit of a leading British Business School, and in July 1981, I was invited to lead a pre-coffee workshop on 'Participatory Democracy' at another University.
At 08.45 am I was going through my notes and my overhead projector presentation, when a petite dark-haired woman in jeans and a T- Shirt came in and sat down. She said she was doing a Masters degree in Business Studies and came from Iran. That very week, there had been a general election in Iran, and the Iranian people had elected a majority of Ayatollah Khomeini's fellow-clerics to govern them, so I said that i looked forward to hearing her views on that issue.
After the workshop, we all took our coffees outside in the sun. Sitting on the grass, I asked the Iranian woman what chance Iran had of becoming a democracy when they seemed to have exchanged the Shah's totalitarian regime for something like a theocracy.
There followed the most alarming and eye-opening conversation I have had in my life. In that time I was told, in perfectly grammatical, slightly-accented English:
- there was no need for elections in Iran because since the overthrow of the Shah, speaking through the Ayatollahs, Allah would tell the Iranian government what to do in all circumstances.
- Iranians are Aryans. They are not Semitic people like the Jews and Arabs. Semitic people are enemies of Aryans, and are all thieves, and dirty.
- Iranians ( Aryans) had to guard against corrupting influences that would lead them to betray their race and their religion. Since the revolution, for example, Iran had arrested and expelled many Filipino maid-servants and nannies because they had encouraged Iranian men to fornicate with them and produce racially-impure babies.
- The persecution and murder of thousands of members of the Bahá'i sect was entirely correct and legally required under Islamic law because they were apostates.
- British people had become weak and impure because they had allowed members of inferior races - coloured people and Jews - to come to work in their country and given them civil rights. Inferior races should not have equal rights with British Aryans. They should be expelled from Britain in order to restore its strength and racial purity.
- Adolf Hitler was a truly great man and his memory is revered in Iran because he protected the purity of the Aryan nation.
These are just the most chilling of the responses by this otherwise charming young woman to my increasingly incredulous questions. Her tone suggested that she was speaking out of a sense of total certainty in a attempt to enlighten a well-meaning but profoundly misguided ignoramus.
Clearly, she had not been taught those views on her M.Sc course. They had been ingrained since childhood in her 'cultural identity, just as school assemblies and Sunday School classes had ingrained 'turn the other cheek' and 'love thy neighbour as thyself' on me and millions of otherwise irreligious British children.
Clearly also, in the 1980s it would have been possible to have a conversation with an otherwise charming Western European racist with extreme right-wing, pro-apartheid, anti-immigrant views. But, held as profound, self-evident religious truths? Without any awareness that only a minority of well-informed and educated people would agree with her? Inconceivable, I think.
Certainly I never encountered such a person, and I have had thousands of serious political conversations in many different countries.
That conversation with the Iranian woman in the sun left me shaken and fearful. It has haunted me down the years as I tried to make sense of the events that were shaping our world.
But until I chanced upon Sørlander's article, I had no way to 'frame' both that experience and understand why all Muslims seemed to inhabit a mental and cultural world that was so totally different from the one that nurtured me.
Everyone who has been puzzled and alarmed by the events of the past 30 years needs to incorporate Sørlander's insights into their thinking and actions so as to leave behind both Washington's disastrous militarism and the meaningless multicultural rhetoric that we are hearing from the Western world's so-called leaders.
Finally, let me say this. I believe that multiracial harmony is entirely achievable within genuinely democratic societies such as those outlined in the Gaian democracy model. However, I believe that multiracial harmony is unachievable in societies that attempt to accomodate incompatible and mutually hostile religions in the name of multi-culturalism.
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