Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1983820,00.html

There's an aspiring totalitarianism in Britain which is brilliantly disguised. It's disguised because the would-be dictators - and there are many of them - all pretend to be more tolerant than thou. They hide alongside the anti-racists, the anti-homophobes and anti-sexists. But what they are really against is something very different. They - call them secular fundamentalists - are anti-God, and what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth.

In recent years these unpleasant people have had a strategy of exploiting Britain's innate politeness. They realised that for a decade overly sensitive souls (normally called the PC brigade) had bent over backwards to avoid giving offence. Trying not to give offence was, despite the excesses, a noble courtesy.

But the fundamentalists saw an opening. Because we live in a multiconfessional society, they fostered the falsehood that wearing a crucifix or a veil or a turban was deeply offensive to other faiths. They pretended to be protecting religious sensibilities as a pretext to strip us of all religious expressions.

In recent years the nastier side of this totalitarianism has become blatantly apparent. It emerged with the hijab issue in France. With the hijab ban in French schools, a state was banishing religion not only from its corridors, but also from its citizens. It was an assertion that after centuries of the naked public square (denuded of religion referents) the public now too had to go naked. The former had been true tolerance, something exceptional and laudable. It allowed everyone to bring their own cosmic testimony to the square. But this new form of "tolerance" changed things. From everyone being welcome, it had become everyone but.

[sam sarrha]

1. sounds paranoid, religion doe have its place.. in the individuals life and out of mine..the school

and the government.

because i believe another's religion and prayer should be kept out of the schools and government property does not mean i deny them their right to believe as they do.. i just want it kept out of my life.. if i want religion i will go find it, and i dont want my children being brainwashed or intimidated to go to Church.

interesting the French governments actual reasons and position on scarves was never made public.. i do know some Europeans that came to the USA because of the Muslim migrants.. they were harassed constantly by them, she said she couldn't ride a bus or walk the streets with out fear.. if she got on the bus a group of Muslim men would surround her and crowd her in the seat and leer at her.. she felt they considered her a whore because she didn't cover her hair, have an escort and the clothes she wore..arms bare and skirts above the floor showing her ankles. there are a LOT of problems in France.. granted they caused them thinking cheap labor was a solution to getting rich.. or staying rich in a declining world.

who there thought the muslim community would want to integrate into french culture... that is not going to happen.. France will have to integrate to accomidate them. religion is foremost and all else is a subset. i have lived in the areas of notth africa where the particular migrants came from... they colonized that area of africa for a long time.. they should have known what they were doing.

'edit'.. this sounds like extortion.. if i disagree with prayer in school..etc.. i am a bad totalitarian and against the good Christians/Muslims who want to run the schools/government and my life.. 'You are with us or against us'

[NMMNG]

2. Yet again some fool confuses "secular" with "atheistic"

The two are not the same.

The greatest appeasers, however, have been the believers. Until recently many hid their religion in the closet. They conceded that it was something private.

He'd love the US where the believers run around shouting about their religion from the mountaintops and the non-believers have to hide in the closets, sometimes in fear for their lives.



Another typical overwrought "we can't run the world anymore, boo hoo hoo" piece.

[xchrom]

3. i haven't thought of the hajib ban the way it's described here.

what i am certain of is that france - and other european countries -- are trying to find ways to remain quintessentially french.

they have centuries of culture that define what that is -- from art and government right down to food.

it's a difficult path -- the world is getting smaller -- and we are all discovering that Sameness is not a value we want to spread.

how to do that is the problem.

france not only struggles with mcdonaldization of it's culture -- but -- in this case -- religion as well.

remember france has had centuries of experience with heavy handed religion -- only then it was catholic.

[Paschall]

4. This op-ed is pretty ridiculous

..."what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth"... Sounds like the coming genocide, and indicates this writer's views aren't worth the digital ink they're written with.

As for France, the French Constitution guarantees the right to believe. Or not. France is—constitutionally—a secular state. Tobias Jones should stick to his British subject and leave France out of the picture. Britain has a state religion after all; France most definitely does not.

As for the so-called "hajib ban" in France, which applies equally to all ostentatious display of religious symbols whatever the confession, it only involves public schools and minor children. Outside of school, and in university settings, Muslim girls and women can wear the hajib if they wish. Public schools are simply off-limits for religion, just as French political institutions are. Isn't that what we mean by separation of church and state?

It's probably worth noting that in the late 90s, when the hajib first started to become an issue in France and before this ban was put in place, school authorities were allowed on a per-case basis to accept the hajib in their classrooms if they felt it would not disrupt the educational program. What resulted? The most militant Muslim families began pushing to have their daughters exempted from biology and physical education classes. (Remind anyone of the Kansas "intelligent design" controversy?) As the situation grew more explosive, French Muslim women themselves were among the most vocal proponents of the ban.

In a somewhat similar vein: When the French parliament was debating the gay civil union law in 1999, one anti-gay legislator carried a Bible into the assembly and brandished it during her speech. She was booed—very loudly—for her Bible-thumping by her Conservative colleagues.

Jones errs on another point regarding modern-day France: The church and state were separated by law in 1905; that's hardly "centuries" ago.

[kiahzero]

11. No, that's not what we mean, at least not in America.

Public schools are simply off-limits for religion, just as French political institutions are. Isn't that what we mean by separation of church and state?

In America, we have the Free Exercise Clause, which is just as important as the Establishment Clause... in fact, the two are in the same sentence. This is why students are free to pray in public schools; they are by no means "off-limits for religion."

[cosmik debris]

5. This article reads like a parody, satire or spoof.

It certainly does not sound like a legitimate op-ed piece.

[Az]

6. Crikey! They are on to the British branch of the EAC!

Scramble the black helicopters stat!

[kwassa]

7. This guy is a nutjob

He was last about five minutes on DU.

this pearl of contradiction:

"Christians feel particularly aggrieved because we believe that Jesus invented secularism."

I like this letter in response.

"Having struggled through to the end of this strange article, I think the answer to the first paragraph is that these would-be dictators are difficult to spot not so much because they are brilliantly disguised as because they are not there."

MichaelBulley January 6, 2007 01:52 AM

[toddaa]

8. All this power is going straight to my head

KNEEL BEFORE ME, RELIGIOUS SWINE!!! I DEMAND TRIBUTE!

[cosmik debris]

9. I am in awe!

How can such a small minority exercise such cruel tyranny over such a huge majority? Especially when they have God on their side! The power is certainly intoxicating!

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. There's a lot of comments there, but so far, this seems to be true:

"It is a rare piece in the Guardian that elicits such a unanimous response, given the usually brawling and sectional types who inhabit its orbit.

So congratulations to Tobias Jones for starting the new year with a sufficiently meretricious piece of rubbish that we are one voice."

Given that you don't actually have to be a Guardian reader, or support their generally liberal views in any way to post comments, it is indeed remarkable to find no-one trying to support Jones.

Slightly worryingly, he claims to have graduated from Oxford University with a double first in English and History. Standards there must be slipping.

[hyphenate]

12. Regardless of the situation

in the UK, the US is pretty much the polar opposite of that. Here, we have the fundies so focused on destroying any anti-religious beliefs and trends, with the idiot in chief in their pocket, and them trying every possible maneuver to take "us" down. Let's face it--the moderate Christians, who comprise at least 60-70% of the total Christian population, have let the nutjobs on the far right appear to be the majority, instead of putting down the fundie incursion, and putting them into their place.

Instead, we have the fundies doing everything in their power to make those of us with different beliefs look like criminals, wackos, and owned by the devil. Instead of trying to set the record straight, we have allowed these people to tarnish whatever causes we stand for, and with an inch, they have taken the mile.

Secularism is mostly aimed at keeping one's religious beliefs from influencing the political landscape, and likely includes so many more than atheists--Jews, pagans, Wiccans, pretty much everyone who adheres to some other faith than Christendom. It is the right of every person to be entitled to their own beliefs as long as it does not harm another. And establishing a government with this system required every single founding father to put aside his own opinion in order to keep the US a country free from religious tyranny. Many pilgrims who came to the US escaped from Europe and the religious oppression felt there--is there any wonder that they wanted to keep that from their new government?

And yes, being secular does not mean one is an atheist. Secular humanists tend to focus on being individuals who don't have a desire to practice an established religion. It is not so much in their purview as their desire to be respected for mainly being decent human beings.

I do hope that with a Democratic congress that the influence of such religious fanatics and wackos is minimized, but we must accept that moderates are less likely to speak up and less likely to stir controversy. And ignoring these morons is twice as bad--they have managed to do irreparable damage to the country's psyche in the past thirty odd years by being ignored and deemed a minority presence, and left to strategize and plan their attack.

[Taverner]

13. You cannot win a war against an idea by force

Sorry, just doesn't work that way

If you are a Secular Humanist Realist (as am I) you can only hope for the veil to slowly be lifted by reason itself.