We were invited to argue the case for the proposition on The Big Questions last Sunday.
By Chris Moos and Abhishek Phadnis of LSE SU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society
Should human rights outweigh religious rights? We were invited to argue the case for the proposition on The Big Questions last Sunday. As novices to television, we spent a week refining and rehearsing our arguments for the big day.
In the event, we needn’t have bothered, because the defining irony of secularism is that there is no better advertisement for it than the uninterrupted ramblings of a group of religious monomaniacs.
The Reverend Lynda Rose claimed that Britain was “very close to seeing active suppression of Christians which will lead to persecution …we’ve seen this happen before in Nazi Germany”.
Her proposed inoculation for the emergence of the Fourth Reich in Canterbury involved giving Christians the right to refuse gay couples entry to their B&B’s: it wasn’t born of homophobia, she assured us, but because her religion deplored cohabiting unmarried couples (in an entirely unrelated aside, the Reverend campaigned tirelessly against last year’s Marriage [Same Sex Couples] Bill).
So, the presenter Nicky Campbell asked her, would she support the right of Muslims and Jews to not sell alcohol and pork, as was demanded recently at Marks & Spencer? Alas. “If you are going to have those problems you should not work on the tills” , she responded.
Meanwhile, her co-religionist, the Reverend Betty King, whose heavy workload of exorcisms perhaps clouds her capacity for consistent reasoning, argued cheerfully for her right to manifest her religious beliefs but said she would “applaud” a ban on the niqab.
Now, there is a genuine progressive case against the niqab, but as the protagonists of the Jesus and Mo kerfuffle it was hardly our place to advocate dress codes; so, in a spirit of something approaching solidarity, we conveyed this sentiment to the panel’s two Islamist apologists (dressed in a hijab and a niqab) and enquired whether they would reciprocate by supporting our right to wear the t-shirts.
“No! Why would you want to offend religious faith?”, they cried, concluding the episode’s advisory about the consequences of entrusting your freedoms to religious monomaniacs.
As slippery as these peddlers of exclusive rights are the fair-weather rights crusaders. David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, had movingly attacked the Rev. King’s homophobia, likening the B&B exclusion to the signs of ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’ that greeted his immigrant father in the 1950s. Shortly after that, he entreated us to “respect” those defending gender segregation at public universities in the UK.
When Mr. Lammy was pressed on whether the right to freedom of expression included the right to offend, there was a pregnant pause (during which he, presumably, recalculated his electoral majority) before he replied with “yes, but just because you have the right to offend doesn’t mean you should go on to offend”, his answer overstaying its welcome by precisely seventeen words.
We find that his attitude embodies the exasperating current fixation with according unearned ‘respect’ to people’s beliefs, in the pursuit of a mythical Eden of harmony that would appear if only we stopped offending each other. To us, this ‘respect’ seems to serve only to prop up unworthy ideas, and is intrinsically doomed, since those who claim it are not inclined to return the gesture.
Instead, we find that it often conceals our indifference to the imperilled rights of women from ethnic minorities, escalating from the right to choose where to sit to the right to choose whom to marry or even the right to their bodily integrity. We recognise their community’s title to them before we recognise their individuality, a notion we would never accept for ourselves.
Mr. Lammy cannot summon the will to defend unequivocally the rights of Muslim women like Lejla Kuric, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Sara Khan, Tehmina Kazi or Sheema Khan, who oppose segregation in principle and in practice, because he has already swallowed the narrative of homogeneity, as evidenced by his proud claim that he doesn’t even offer to shake hands with the women at local synagogues “out of respect”.
Worse still, this ‘respect’ is offered most generously to those who scorn most fervently the mores of our shared society.
Hence, Mr. Lammy’s comments deferred not to Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim who represents the finest synthesis of British Islam and does more for the rights and freedoms of Muslims than anyone else in that studio last Sunday, but to the berobed Islamists striving to be most visibly and vocally parochial, who would see Muslim women remain shackled to the yoke of the ‘community’, and who think their disdain for the rights of others entitles their beliefs to greater respect.
These religious apologists provided, unassisted, the episode’s most convincing illustration of why the primacy of religious belief over individual rights militates against everything essential to a civilised society. “I may not agree with what you have to say”, they said, “and I will defend to the death my right to stop you saying it.”
We just got the popcorn and watched.
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18 Responses to “Should human rights outweigh religious rights?”
Greg Tingey
Why is it, though – and this is especially pertinent in your journal/blog …
That the political “left” seem especially keen to get down & grovel to the peddlers of Dark-Ages camelherders’ myths?
These people are, literally, 622 years behind the christians, & boy, doesn’t it show!
Come to that, are they prepeared to satnd up for the rights of, say Ahmmahdia (sp?) muslims, bitterly persecuted in Pakistan & elsewhere? SOmehow, I think not – it’s a oine-way street.
Charles Baily
Two other participants caught my attention – the niqab-ed geneticist (sounds like an oxymoron – I can’t see how it works) whose attitudes seemed to be much more tolerant and liberal than those of the Muslim woman next to her; and the rabbi gung-ho in pursuit of infant genital mutilation. I agree so much with your assessment of Maajid Nawaz – the minute traction and huge hostility he attracts says more about the intractability of vocal Islam in Britain than about him.
johndowdle
In answer to the question, human rights can guarantee freedom of belief – however irrational it may be – whereas religious rights do not guarantee human rights; just ask the legions of children abused by clerics if they ever felt their human rights were being kept?
As far as the TV programme is concerned, I long ago stopped watching it as I find the assortment of nut cases being paraded before us anything but amusing.
Most of them are ideologically ludicrous and any reasonable person can see this – as the writers of this article clearly illuminated for us all.
Perhaps one day there will be a genuine programme on TV that will reflect what we as humanists and secularists actually subscribe to but I suggest no one holds their breath waiting for this to happen; it could be really injurious to attempt such a course of action.
The cowardice of politicians is really hard to understand but this is what happens when you get excessive concern for marginal voters, I am afraid. Their principles simply go out of the window until after the time next general election has been held.
As much as I find the actions of people like Lammy distasteful, I find the actions of people like Gove & Co. far more troubling, determined – as they are – to inflict nonsensical religious belief on children. The only problem is: are the alternatives any better?
There seems little indication that they are. I am appalled by the extent to which politicians try to curry favour with any religious lobby in a squalid attempt to gain votes.
trekker2002
I was delighted to see Nicky making the two berobed ladies answer the question. Their answer was of course entirely predictable but it is always entertaining to see someone publicly impaled on the horns of a dilemma of their own making and there is always the faint hope that being forced to acknowledge it may open a chink in their mindset. It is either a universal right to dress as one pleases or it is not, it cannot simultaneously be both and the mind that tries to hold both opinions at once will have a hard time doing so.
Jim
You have the right to say I think you are wrong or that is inappropriate in a polite manner. What you do not have the right to do is to use threats or intimidation to backup your disapproval. For example, I dislike the BNP but I equally detest the NUS tactics of physically preventing them or anyone else whose views they dislike from speaking. That, to me, smacks of the brown shirts in the 1930s. In essense, people you criticise have a right to ignore your protest and carry on saying or doing whatever if they are not beaking the law.