A really fantastic start

Some days you hear something and, rather than just rolling your eyes and then having to go off to 'ventblog', you can smile and whoop for joy about progress. It doesn't happen very often, as if I thought the world was just going swimmingly and I could leave the people in charge to get on with it, I wouldn't actually be involved in politics at all.

The last time I felt such optimism was when I heard about the sensible effort of Ram FM in Israel; but now it is Turkey and it's efforts to produce a progressive Islam by having another look at the Hadiths.

This is fantastic, because it is in the Hadiths that the majority (although not all0 of the more misogynistic rules that blight the lives of so many women. In fact a blight on many men's lives as well.

This is a great start and I commend the brave people who have got the government of Turkey to take this move. Maybe there are cynical reasons behind Turkey doing this but, hey, on balance I think it is a good thing. Islam gets a lot of bad press that it doesn't deserve but not all the practices that we condemn countries like Saudi Arabia for are just cultural, some of them can be found in holy texts.

It's just the start and like the reformation will take many years to truly percolate through society. There will be battles ahead but it is a start!!! A start!!!

One of the commenters (is that a word?) in the BBC Have Your Say web site, says this:

"When will the world's people stop believing in fairly tales that were dreamt up thousands of years ago to control the masses and start thinking for themselves?"

Of course, I don't believe in god and religions either but I rather suspect it will be a while yet before I am joined in that belief by the majority. In the meantime I will find great hope in the fact the we are at the start of a very long journey that will make millions of men and women free from the misogyny and cruelty that can be found in so many of the Hadiths.

Hooray; what a day!!

What's all this cultural relativism about then?

Gillian Gibbons is freed and the Sudanese Government hasn’t made any contribution to the idea that Islam is a peaceful religion and that followers of Islam are not all fanatics ready to take umbrage at the slightest slur to their religion.

In the UK, it has been pleasing to see that the majority of people commenting, irrespective of their religion or lack thereof have been appalled by the actions of the Sudanese government; at all points there were choices both around the interpretation of the offence and the law and at every point the Sudanese establishment chose the most extreme action.

There has been though, throughout this, whether on BBC comments, Blogs or Any Answers a significant minority of people who have suggested that Gillian Gibbons only had herself to blame, as she should have known the law. She was in fact naive.

I think there is an enormous difference between causing offence and invoking the displeasure or irritation of whoever has been offending (and therefore being marked out as someone you wouldn’t want to spend time with) and being put in prison or lashed for it. The naming of a teddy bear does no physical harm to anybody.

I’m pretty much an atheist and don’t have much time for religion, but I’ve no real interest in going around deliberately causing offence to other people for the sake of it; I think that’s a waste of time, energy and just not very nice. But I believe passionately in free speech and therefore in my right to cause offence without being punished by a state for it.

I’ll give you an example from my own experience where, as an acutely left handed person, I am in danger of causing offence every time I go to the Middle East and without realising it pick up my bread to scoop up some food with my left hand. This is really, really bad table manners; I mean I might as well start picking my nose at the table (in fact, it’s much, much worse than that…but I don’t want to put you off your dinner). Should I be lashed or sent to prison because I have, with no malicious intention broken, in Meral Ece’s words, ‘a few of the cultural 'rules' we learn to live with’,? Sure, don’t invite me to dinner again, suggest I use a knife and fork rather than my hand (as people have) or just tell me plainly not to use my left hand (as an ex-fiancé’s brother once decreed), explain to me the error of my ways, but please don’t send me to prison for it!

Another analogy: this time looking the young woman the other week in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes for being in the company of a man she wasn’t related to ahead of being gang raped. Now, she is a Saudi, not just a visiting teacher, she surely knew the law? Do we all then sit back, fold our hands on our laps and say: ‘Well, she knew what the law was…how naïve of her!’. No, we don’t, because we know that her punishment under that law is an infringement of human rights, just as the response to Gillian Gibbons was by no means reasonable or just a harmless cultural difference. I make this point not out of a lack of respect for the rule of law in a given country but out of my greater respect for human rights.

Perhaps if Gillian Gibbons had got the lashings she was at risk of, instead of a very short prison sentence and pardon, then not as many people would have found it so easy to slip back into an ‘oh, well, it’s different there’ mentality; but remember it’s not just western primary school teachers that have no freedom of speech or apostasy in Sudan, is it?

Lots of people, from all religions or none know and understand this, I am sure, but lets not forget that human rights are for everybody, absolute and not subject to cultural relativism.

Arab women not realising their full potential....

The UN Report on Arab Development came out today. For someone who visits the Middle East regularly, this report resonates well with my own experiences in trying to engage with the people I know there in debate on issues of freedom of speech and women’s rights.

I’m currently having a, at times very heated, debate over email and text message with a Bedouin friend of mine as to why I think sharia law and human rights are mutually exclusive.

My friend and I often stumble in our debate as I see it as the most normal and necessary process in the world to interrogate and scrutinise everything from religion to a parent’s decision to take a girl out of school to help look after her younger siblings. He sees this as a disrespectful attack on his religion and traditions. We struggle to even agree on the terms of the debate.

This report is a bit like knowing the Myers Briggs preferences (I’m an INTJ, by the way) of someone but for a whole region. It helps me understand better why my desire to debate is so often rejected and that I may need to reframe my approach – although I haven’t quite worked out how yet!

It also confirms a concern I had when I read on the BBC website that around 40% of Muslims (polled in February 2006) in Britain wanted to introduce sharia law to the UK. UK development and economic success didn’t happen by accident; they are a result of our values and traditions of free speech, human rights and equality before the law – we can’t just cream off the bits we like and dump the rest. They come as a package.

I have sent a link to the report to my friend; I’m interested to find out what he thinks of it!