Plural Identities

Superannuated cult dudes

I went to my third or maybe even fourth Robyn Hitchcock concert last week - this is more due to my husband's devotion to 'Sir' Robyn than mine. RH was looking older, more hunched, than we expected, but the eccentric English melodic melancholy was still going strong.  He sings of "heading for paradise, or Basingstoke or Reading" on "I Often Dream of Trains" - the concert is apparently "the director's cut" of this album.

His commentary between songs is as much part of the performance as the songs.  At one point, he rather ruined my admiration of his surreal and unpredictable meanderings by launching into a tirade about how he couldn't believe he once voted for Blair and how as a person who doesn't believe in anything, he views with suspicion anyone who does, as they cause so much harm in the world.  Well I'm an atheist too, but I really disagree with this "they're all as bad as each other" Bin Laden=Blair assertion.
Not only are Blair's Christian beliefs absolutely preferable to the Taliban's or Al Qaeda's, but the means, above all the means are so different. Blair sought to liberate, and not deliberately to kill massed civilians through terrorist acts.

In England we have battered the Christian church into something we can live with, even positively love aspects of (I would rather like to have Faure's Requiem and maybe "My Song is Love Unknown" at my atheist funeral, I'm afraid).  I agree with Daniel Finkelstein's gentle, mild article on this.

Which brings us unavoidably to the Archbish (I really don't understand why Mrs Archbish doesn't sneak up and attack those eyebrows with nail scissors when he's unawares), blogged to death already.  I thought "better read the whole speech, before commenting" but thankfully Tom at Freemania already has and it turns out the Archbish has probably been reading Amartya Sen too (“our social identities are not constituted by one exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging") and seems to have come to some rather odd conclusions, namely that secular governments should not monopolise definitions of political and public identity, so therefore plural jurisdictions should be allowed.  As Tom says, he has slid from social identities to public and political identities and then on to citizenship.  And of course that is precisely the problem with Sharia law, particularly as presently promoted by Islamists,(from my reading of Terrorism and Liberalism), which is that it too says there can be no distinction between private and public identities - good Muslims must express their faith in every aspect of their life.  Once you say Sharia law is accepted, there is no way certain Muslims will accept an "alongside with" English Common Law.  Muslims who don't agree will be bullied into accepting the judgement of Sharia courts, more than they are already being bullied.

Where religion intersects with tribalism

Someone left a copy of Matthew Parris's autobiography at the cottage in St Ives we were staying in last week.  I only read the first few chapters, about his childhood in South Africa, Rhodesia, Swaziland, Cyprus and Jamaica (another Third Culture Kid and presumably why he calls himself an outsider in his autobiography subtitle).  He, like me, is not a religious believer, but he makes the point that monotheistic religions like Christianity provided a constructive escape from tribalism for many of the Africans he knew. 

I've become more and more concerned by the intersection between tribalism and religious fundamentalism, since I started (but haven't finished) reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel and hearing the horror stories around "honour killing" where women are killed for wanting to marry someone in a different tribe.

Shiv Malik's article in Prospect about how Mohammad Siddique Khan became a suicide bomber describes convincingly how Islamic fundamentalism provided a way of rebelling against tribalism (the Mullah Boys of Beeston marrying anyone, so long as they were good Muslims), but in a way that is hard for 'proper' Muslim parents to contest.

So the critical moment is not just when isolated young people try to find a group to belong to, but when they are also looking for a credo that gives them a cast iron, supposedly morally superior way to rebel against the traditions of their parents. 

Slightly simplistic Enlightenment Fundamentalist?

From an an interview in the Observer with Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

For Hirsi Ali, the problem is one of self-definition. If Muslims want to assert a religious text as the basis of their public identity, then they have to accept public debate of that text and its ideas with all the discomfort and offence that may involve.

(Hat tip to Butterflies and Wheels)

The Protestantisation of Muslim belief

I did gulp rather when I ripped open my copy of Prospect this month to see that the cover article was on Identity and Migration  and was written by Francis Fukuyama.  I knew I needed to give it (as with all Prospect articles  - of course!) due care and attention, read it in full and make note of it in this blog.

So, I finally found some space, albeit interrupted by Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs and the new (look Mummy, I told you, it's NEW Scooby Doo!) Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue, to take a proper look at it.

It certainly answers many of the questions I had been asking and trying to answer in this blog.

Is there anything in the Muslim religion which encourages Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, above and beyond other religions?
Fukuyama implies not, although he says it is an open question.
There have been many points in history where Muslim societies have been more tolerant than their Christian counterparts.  Fukuyama sees contemporary radical Islamism as a product of identity politics (happiness lies in the recovery of the inner identity), and a problem we have seen before with young people who have become anarchists, Bolsheviks, fascists or members of the Baader Meinhof gang.  It is 'modern' because the question of identity does not come up at all in traditional Muslim societies, where an individual's identity is given by that person's parents and social environment.  To the question 'who am I?' radical Islamism answers - you are a member of the global umma, defined by adherence to universal Islamic doctrine, stripped of all its local customs etc.

How do we solve the problem of jihadist terrorism?
Not by bringing modernisation and democracy to the middle east ('good' though that may be in its own right) - this might even increase rather than dampen the terrorism problem in the short run.

His answer seems to be a more energetic effort to integrate non-western populations into a common liberal culture, and at the same time a recognition that liberalism cannot ultimately be based on group rights, because not all groups uphold liberal values.  He points out that asking Muslims to give up group rights is much more difficult in Europe than in the US, because many European countries have corporatist traditions that continue to respect communal rights and fail decisively to separate church and state.  In the UK this would be state-funded faith schools, for a start. Even France, he argues, has not been consistent in this respect and the "religious symbols at school" ban of 2004 was actually a belated attempt to reassert older concepts of republicanism.

Ultimately, he says, post modern societies need to assert positive values and shared beliefs more vigorously than before, which is difficult given that we cannot agree on the substance of the good life to which we aspire in common.

Read, as they say, the rest, preferably without Scooby, Shaggy and Harry's background commentary.

Ow!

Handholder

You go out of your way to build bridges with people of different views and beliefs and have quite a few religious friends. You believe in the essential goodness of people , which means you’re always looking for common ground even if that entails compromises. You would defend Salman Rushdie’s right to criticise Islam but you’re sorry he attacked it so viciously, just as you feel uncomfortable with some of the more outspoken and unkind views of religion in the pages of this magazine.

You prefer the inclusive approach of writers like Zadie Smith or the radical Christian values of Edward Said. Don’t fall into the same trap as super–naïve Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge who declared it was okay for clerics like Yusuf al–Qaradawi to justify their monstrous prejudices as a legitimate interpretation of the Koran: a perfect example of how the will to understand can mean the sacrifice of fundamental principles. Sometimes, you just have to hold out for what you know is right even if it hurts someone’s feelings. What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

Just cranky guys in caves?

Fascinating article in the New Yorker (hat tip to the Euston Manifesto blog) on how to counteract insurgency and terrorism.  First up is an Australian anthropologist and lieutenant colonel, David Kilcullen:

“After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It’s about human social networks and the way that they operate...There are elements in human psychological and social makeup that drive what’s happening. The Islamic bit is secondary. This is human behavior in an Islamic setting. This is not ‘Islamic behavior.’”

According to Kilcullen, all 15 of the Saudi 9/11 hijackers had trouble with their fathers.

Kilcullen's main point is that Al Qaeda are engaged in a global information war.

“If bin Laden didn’t have access to global media, satellite communications, and the Internet, he’d just be a cranky guy in a cave,”

He says he too would be a jihadist if he were a Muslim:

“The thing that drives these guys—a sense of adventure, wanting to be part of the moment, wanting to be in the big movement of history that’s happening now—that’s the same thing that drives me, you know?”

It certainly does seem that wanting to be part of something bigger, not being content with parochial, local status, drives many terrorists, islamist or otherwise.  I wonder whether immigrant groups aren't even more prone to this, as they have tasted the world outside the dull society they are trying to join and know there is something more out there than just getting a nice job that would please their parents.

The New Yorker article goes on to suggest ways of combating terrorism and insurgency.

"A war on terror suggests an undifferentiated enemy. Kilcullen speaks of the need to “disaggregate” insurgencies: finding ways to address local grievances in Pakistan’s tribal areas or along the Thai-Malay border so that they aren’t mapped onto the ambitions of the global jihad."

The article then features a second anthropologist, Montgomery McFate, who wrote of the mistakes  made in Iraq, similar to Kilcullen's analysis about social networks, as follows:

“Once the Sunni Ba’thists lost their prestigious jobs, were humiliated in the conflict, and got frozen out through de-Ba’thification, the tribal network became the backbone of the insurgency. The tribal insurgency is a direct result of our misunderstanding the Iraqi culture.”

The project McFate is now involved in at the Pentagon

"is recruiting social scientists around the country to join five-person “human terrain” teams that would go to Iraq and Afghanistan with combat brigades and serve as cultural advisers on six-to-nine-month tours. Pilot teams are planning to leave next spring."

Much more money and resources is needed to fund these kind of programmes and create social network alternatives to extremism and insurgency.  More supporting evidence for this:

"After September 11th, Sageman traced the paths of a hundred and seventy-two alienated young Muslims who joined the jihad, and found that the common ground lay not in personal pathology, poverty, or religious belief but in social bonds."

Based on these kinds of analyses

"Kilcullen has plotted out a “ladder of extremism” that shows the progress of a jihadist. At the bottom is the vast population of mainstream Muslims, who are potential allies against radical Islamism as well as potential targets of subversion, and whose grievances can be addressed by political reform. The next tier up is a smaller number of “alienated Muslims,” who have given up on reform. Some of these join radical groups, like the young Muslims in North London who spend afternoons at the local community center watching jihadist videos. They require “ideological conversion”—that is, counter-subversion, which Kilcullen compares to helping young men leave gangs. A smaller number of these individuals, already steeped in the atmosphere of radical mosques and extremist discussions, end up joining local and regional insurgent cells, usually as the result of a “biographical trigger—they will lose a friend in Iraq, or see something that shocks them on television.” With these insurgents, the full range of counterinsurgency tools has to be used, including violence and persuasion. The very small number of fighters who are recruited to the top tier of Al Qaeda and its affiliated terrorist groups are beyond persuasion or conversion. “They’re so committed you’ve got to destroy them,” Kilcullen said. “But you’ve got to do it in such a way that you don’t create new terrorists.”

Western governments should establish competing “trusted networks” in Muslim countries: friendly mosques, professional associations, and labor unions."

I believe Western governments should be encouraging such "trusted networks" to integrate with otherwise excluded groups in their own countries too.

Wanting to belong

The first few paragraphs of the excerpt given by Norm Geras of Barack Obama's autobiography had me nodding with admiration for his mother and his view of her.  "Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives."  Then he disappoints with his 'why I nonetheless joined a church', because he wanted to belong to a group.  So mundane. As I said in my letter published a couple of months ago in the Financial Times (cough cough):

"Sir, Although the new Commission for Integration and Cohesion will not be looking at the issue of faith schools, there is no doubt in my mind that Amartya Sen is right ("Multiculturalism: an unfolding tragedy of two confusions", August 22) that the impact of faith schools on the values we as a society want to teach our children must be considered.

Based on my own experience of living overseas as a child and the work I do now in helping people to adjust to different cultures, it is clear that cultural values are formed at an early age - from about five to 12 years old. After this age, it is increasingly difficult to change one's values. Instead, the overwhelming motivator is to "belong".

That is why fundamentalist groups find rich pickings for converts at universities, when a young person has moved away from home and is trying to find a new sense of belonging. If that young person has already absorbed values which allow him to see other groups as less than human, it is a dangerous combination. I hope therefore the commission takes a two-pronged approach.

First, a check that the values promoted during our children's formative years do not include any sense that people of other faiths (and of course other ethnicities) are less worthy and do include western liberal values such as the one that Prof Sen highlights, of "being able to reason freely".

Second, that despite Britain's class-ridden tradition, our society finds ways to provide all young people with a sense of belonging and access to the networks that provide good jobs, education and a rich social life. I strongly believe the kind of mentoring schemes Ruth Kelly, the communities and local government secretary, mentioned would be an effective way to do this."

One of my best friends at my Oxbridge college was a working class Goth who loved French literature and whom I met singing Haydn in a choir.  The God Squad got her in her second year, and I believe she was vulnerable to their 'charms' for the very reason I liked her - she had so many supposedly conflicting identities. So she never really belonged to any one group and that had ultimately made her feel unhappy and lonely.  They offered her unconditional belonging.  Well not entirely unconditional - I believe she had to confess to all her sins at a prayer meeting, which were many and involved a lot of sex and drugs - they should have sold tickets at the door.

Not wishing to sound too cynical, but I would imagine that having chosen a 'public life' as Obama puts it, belonging to a powerful and motivated group such as an African American church must be helpful.  More helpful than becoming an Arthurian, which is what my Goth friend became after she lost her faith.

We don't talk about religion or politics

The reason that I have not blogged for a week was that I was conducting some training sessions in the Bible Belt of the USA and had little time or inclination to write, although the sessions themselves provoked some further thoughts for this blog.

I had mentioned religion last time I did these sessions and was told by the HR Manager that "we don't talk about religion or politics", but as the American participants brought it up last time, I thought I had better come prepared this time too, and sure enough, just as I was explaining the 'plural identities' concept - talking about how we assume different identities depending on the situation, not just national cultural identity but as a parent or a middle aged person or a southerner etc, someone immediately asked 'what about religion?'.  So I added it to the list and then talked about how important the religious identity seemed to be to Americans compared to Europeans, and straight away another participant interjected that indeed, for him, his religious identity came before everything else.  It turned out he was a Mormon (although it seems he prefers the acronym of LDS (Latter Day Saints).  Throughout the two days his total certainty of his own rightness but at the same time willingness to speak out was both irritating and welcome.

Above all, it brought home to me one of the issues at the heart of current debates about integration of immigrants, American foreign policy, Muslim identities etc - both Islamic fundamentalists and a large proportion of the US (not us!  said my friends that I stayed with afterwards in Princeton) see their religious identity as the most important identity, that can never be put into the background, whatever the situation.  As Sen argues, and as has been borne out, it's an attitude which prepares the ground for violent conflict.  It's an attitude which Europeans mostly do not understand or have much time for.

Some of the slides I made for the training, in anticipation that they would bring up religion and US-Europe relations, came from the fascinating book "America against the world: Why we are different and why we are disliked", based on research on cultural values by the Pew Institute, amongst others.

Believe in God:

US 94%

Great Britain 61%

France 56%

Germany 50%

Is it necessary to believe in God to be moral?

                              No                      Yes

US                           40%                    58%

Great Britain            73%                    25%

France                    86%                      13%

Germany                 66%                      33%

Red rag, papal bull

I'm sorry this has been seen as a potentially damaging climb down, as I am a bit of an Alan Johnson fan (long before he was tipped as a potential leader, honest) and in any case I assumed he was going to sit this leadership contest out, possibly as deputy, with an eye on future leadership. 

I meant to blog earlier about this article written by  Dr Vincent Nichols, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham and ask why, if Catholic schools really are on average taking 30% of pupils from non-RC backgrounds, do they have a problem with the proposed legislation to make them take 25%.  I suppose it's the normal human reaction of kicking against being ordered around, although as they are getting government money one way or another, it does seem rather rich that they should protest if it has strings attached.  My criticism of the proposal might be that it is too narrow in its definition of how a faith school should be seen to be inclusive and integrative.  I wonder a bit if it wasn't one of those government 'waving a red rag' to get some debate going and gauging a reaction with no real intention of actually trying to put it into legislation.

Veiled response

I don't think anyone would disagree with the Archbishop of Canterbury that there should be no problem with people visibly displaying their religious affiliation in public (presumably, in case any Satanists get the wrong idea, only to the extent that the clothing is not an incitement to violence or religious hatred, or grossly indecent), but that was not what Jack Straw said anyway.  He was making what I consider to be a reasonable point that he would prefer it if people removed their veil when they came to see him in his surgeries.  So,as a British citizen seeking a favour of an elected politician, one should dress in a way that shows respect to the politician and enables one to communicate (and allows the other person to focus) properly on what one wants to say.  The identity one should put foremost is that of a British citizen, not some other identity whether it is religious or professional or anything else.  I'm not saying one has to remove all signs of other identities, but if they dominate, then you have to accept that your message may be impeded and the other person may not react as positively as you would like.

In terms of practicality, there cannot be any doubt that a veil impedes communication.  There were various comments on the radio about how the veiled Ms Azmi and others seemed to communicate perfectly well with a radio audience or with the interviewer, but I heard one instance of such a comment, made to Melanie Phillips, who was in a different studio to the interviewer, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, and in fact she did misunderstand the interviewer, because some vital body language and the joky glib tone were lost down the wires.

I am going to quote Prof Mehrabian's famous finding that 7% of a message is contained in the actual meaning of the words, 38% in the way the words are said and 55% in other non-verbal signals, but with a caveat.  On double checking this last week during a training session where I used this statistic (the joys of a wireless laptop connection) I found Prof Mehrabian's website where he points out, rather wearily, that his finding only applies in instances where a like or dislike is being communicated.  So if you are simply communicating to someone how to work a microwave oven, you could probably stick a bag over your head and still get your message across. 

Ultimately, if you are in a situation where you are interacting with someone, and you want them to respond to you, and respond to you positively, then surely you will want to do all you can to maximise the way your message is expressed and make your likes and dislikes clear.  Radio and TV communicators are not asking the listener to respond to their message by doing something for them, teachers and people visiting MP's surgeries are.