Archives for November 2016

Uncertainty, democracy, and the role of reason

November 14, 2016 by Liam Whitton

This editorial originally appeared in the British Humanist Association’s ebulletin, a weekly briefing to BHA members and supporters covering the latest news, views, videos, events relating to Humanism in the UK. Sign up for the ebulletin to receive the BHA’s briefing each week.

It didn’t start in America and it didn’t start with the election of Donald Trump. For months pundits have discussed the phenomenon of ‘post-truth politics’: politics deliberately based on simplification, appealing to the raw emotions of the electorate. Evidence, historical precedent, well-reasoned analyses: all count for nothing. In fact they are repudiated as being the preserve of elites.

This populism replacing reasoned politics is now global and a major threat to universal human rights, to secularism, to reason, and to humanist values.

In India, Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government disparages the open secular framework that has long held the most diverse nation in the world in some sort of social harmony. In Poland, the Government is preparing once again for an aggressive assault on the rights of women, justified entirely through appeals to Catholic dogma. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte indulges in sermon-like attacks on atheists, interwoven with rabble-rousing cries to bring back the death penalty. And in Russia, Putin, re-elected President in 2012, has used aggressive foreign policy to settle domestic political issues while imprisoning those who offend the church or criticise his regime. In Turkey, we see one of the greatest tragedies of our age: a country full of cosmopolitan potential transformed into a police state under Erdoğan, without democracy and without a free press or judiciary. In Hungary, the rule of law is rapidly becoming history. Elections in the next few months threaten the rise of far-right authoritarian parties in Austria, France, and the Netherlands.

When the world is so very far from what we want it to be, there is a temptation to retreat, to tend to one’s own garden and look to the private and the domestic. These are, after all, areas of our lives where we at least have some sort of control, and where we can have some positive effect.

This isn’t entirely the wrong instinct. Just as peace between nations starts with love between people and happiness in societies, our little choices can affect the bigger picture. So much of the BHA’s work is directed to the lives of individuals: our school volunteers encourage young people to open their minds and their sympathies, our pastoral carers give like-minded support to those in personal crises, and our celebrants guide families and couples through some of the highest and lowest points in their lives.

But public crises call for our public involvement, not just private actions.

As humanists, we champion secularism because we believe everyone is treated better when governments and churches are kept apart. We champion human rights not simply because we believe in the equal dignity of every living person, but because we know that this is something all-too easily forgotten by humankind. And we steadfastly champion democracy and the rule of law, along with those civil values that ensure their smooth functioning.

In all that we do, these social values are our guides, along with reason, empathy, and kindness. The future is uncertain and ever-harder to predict. But we must enter it optimistically, rationally, and with a cool head on our shoulders. Our humanist way of thinking has given the world so much over the centuries and its resources are far from depleted. We are entering a dark chapter in the human story, but the light has burned brightly in darker times than this. Today we all have a responsibility to tend the flame.

Offended? That’s the price of freedom.

November 4, 2016 by Andrew Copson

Photo: Jennifer Moo

In 2008, the blasphemy laws were abolished in England and Wales. They protected the tender sympathies of the Anglican God against any insults whether spoken in public or written. Relics of a more theocratic age, their eventual abolition may have seemed inevitable, but in practice many organisations and individuals had to campaign hard for it for many decades. Real change was anything but a foregone conclusion: at the same time as the case was being made for progressive reforms, there were those pushing not for the abolition of blasphemy laws, but for their extension.

These calls went back to 1989 when the then Archbishop of Canterbury had called for the blasphemy laws be extended to criminalise offences against Islam. This was in the context of the violent street reaction to Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, stoked by the incendiary rhetoric of the Ayatollah Khomeini, which left many dead around the world. He didn’t get his way, but perhaps the Archbishop needn’t have bothered, as it seems that criticism or mockery of religion is now being censured by many public bodies of their own free will, and a social climate prevails which allows this to happen.

The last few years have seen many examples of religion being made immune from criticism or mockery in our public spaces, especially in universities, where student union authorities have played the role of heavy-handed thought police. In University College London, the humanist society was sanctioned by the authorities for using a cartoon of Jesus and Mohammed at a bar to advertise their sociable events. That same week, a humanist society talk at Queen Mary’s was cancelled due to death threats. A week later, at LSE, students were censured over ‘Jesus and Mo’ cartoons, and excluded from their own fresher’s fair a year later over T-shirts. At London South Bank, it was for using Christian imagery of the creation of Adam the advertise their drinks. And at Warwick, it was for using a cartoon of a stick man throwing religious symbols like crosses into a bin. Similar incidents, ranging from the troublingly absurd to the decidedly threatening, have taken place at Goldsmiths, Reading, and on many other campuses around England.

The latest victim of course is four-time Olympic medallist Louis Smith, forced to apologise and banned by British Gymnastics for enjoying a silly joke at the expense of religious practices which many people find ridiculous, and, in the course of doing so, offending those who would prefer to see religious ideas protected from scrutiny. Conceding to those demands sets us on a worrying course.

Absurd though we may think them, religions are big and powerful ideas. Many people think they are not just absurd but malign: barriers to human intellectual and moral progress. Whatever we think of them, in the history of Europe almost all social progress has come from criticising – yes, and ridiculing – their ideas and practices. All the benefits of free thought and free speech that we enjoy in Britain today come as a result of overturning their control.

In 2016, close to 70 countries have real blasphemy laws in statute. 43 of these treat it as an imprisonable offence, and in six others it is a crime punished with torture or the death sentence. The countries that actually enforce these rules are not places where you would want to live. The laws create a totalitarian atmosphere where people are so unfree that many live out the entirety of their lives never speaking their true thoughts, even to their closest friends and family. I have met many emigrants from Saudi Arabia in particular for whom this was true, but it is a pattern true of any country where the price of freedom is mortally high. Conform, be silent, never speak your mind. The alternative is to give up your liberty, your health, or even your life.

In our liberal democratic society, public authorities have a duty to protect and advance human rights, including our right to freedom of expression. They should not be victimising individuals for lawful actions, however offensive. Individuals, of course, have other obligations, and will keep their own conscience. We may exercise self-restraint in our own expressions out of politeness or respect. We may even urge others to do the same. But we should never call on the law to enforce our personal values or tastes, however deeply held these may be.

We have all had our most cherished beliefs, identities, or ways of life subject to ridicule at one time or another. When we feel that way, we have a choice. Our duty as citizens in a liberal society is to either engage with our detractors and attempt to persuade them to our way of thinking, or to shrug and ignore it. And then we get on with our lives, accepting that the discomfort we feel is a very small price to pay for freedom.