Sayeeda Warsi, the co-chair of the Conservative Party in England and a “baroness,” has an absolutely deranged op-ed in the Telegraph where she says that Christianity should be more prominent in England and the rest of Europe and that Muslims and Christians should join forces to oppose secularism.
I will be arguing that to create a more just society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds. In practice this means individuals not diluting their faiths and nations not denying their religious heritages.
What world does she live in? The progress over the last couple hundred in creating more just, free and equal societies is largely the result of the diminishing of religious influence over governments. At nearly every turn and in every country, the most important advances in freedom and equality — ending slavery, giving women the right to vote, protecting the equal rights of racial, ethnic, sexual and, yes, religious minorities — have required overcoming the opposition of the dominant religious creeds and dogmas.
I will be arguing for Europe to become more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity. The point is this: the societies we live in, the cultures we have created, the values we hold and the things we fight for all stem from centuries of discussion, dissent and belief in Christianity.
The only word that belongs there is dissent. It is dissent from Christianity that allowed the values of liberal democracy to advance. In the entire history from the establishment of Christianity in ancient Rome to the late 18th century, there is not a single example of a government influenced primarily by Christianity having anything like religious or political freedom. And please provide an example of a Muslim-dominated government that protects freedom, justice and equality. Good luck. We’ll wait.
My fear today is that a militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies. We see it in any number of things: when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; when states won’t fund faith schools; and where religion is sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere.
It seems astonishing to me that those who wrote the European Constitution made no mention of God or Christianity. When I denounced this tendency two days before the Holy Father’s State Visit in September 2010, saying that government should “do God”, I received countless messages of support. The overwhelming message was: “At last someone has said it”.
That so many people felt moved to write showed just how uneasy they were at the rising tide of secularism.
For me, one of the most worrying aspects about this militant secularisation is that at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant. It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes – denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities.
the fact that you have equally ignorant people who support your warped position does not support the truth of that position in the slightest. And the fact that this is all about meeting with the head of the Catholic Church, which for centuries was wedded with government to produce the very totalitarianism she claims is advocated by secularists shows just how unhinged she is.
When we look at the deep distrust between some communities today, there is no doubt that faith has a key role to play in bridging these divides. If people understand that accepting a person of another faith isn’t a threat to their own, they can unite in fighting bigotry and work together to create a more just world.
Ah yes. Muslims and Christians should unite to attack secularists, who are trying to create a totalitarian society, in the name of bridging divides and fighting bigotry. I’ll take contradictory bullshit for $1000, Alex.
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Chiroptera
February 16, 2012 at 2:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
…and that Muslims and Christians should join forces to oppose secularism.
It’s true that centuries of living in liberal democracies have kind of blunted contemporary Western Christians’ edge.
I bet she’s thinking about joining up with the Islamicists in Afghanistan and Nigeria. She’s probably hoping they can inspire Western Christains to “be all they can be.”
rjmx
February 16, 2012 at 2:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think we’re safe , really. The likelihood of getting Muslims and Christians to unite on anything is so small that you’d need a microscope to see it.
Larry
February 16, 2012 at 2:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s even better than that. The likelihood of getting different sects of Muslims or Christians to unite on anything is just as small.
People’s Front of Judea or Judean People’s Front anyone?
Chiroptera
February 16, 2012 at 2:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
rjmx, #2:
That’s what they used to say about Protestants and Catholics.
Once conservative Christians and conservative Muslims realize that they have hatred of women and gays in common and that that is all that really matters, you’ll see them happily working together to try to push back the light.
Etiene
February 16, 2012 at 2:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I can assure you this is not even close to being true.
This time round a quick glance at the letters section of the Guardian showed a wall of condemnation for the delusional woman.
GenghisFaun
February 16, 2012 at 2:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In this hypothetical non-secular world in which she claims to want to live, she would have no power to even express this irony-laden drivel!
Bronze Dog
February 16, 2012 at 3:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I can’t remember who said it, but he described fundamentalist Christianity as a big tent where everyone is holding a concealed knife. I think it’s an accurate image. The only thing uniting the fundie Christians is a hatred for some of their mutual enemies. Allying with Islamic fundies will make the tent bigger and introduce more knives.
If they ever do defeat secularism, it’ll be a rush to the bottom as every faction wars and schisms until we’re in an anarchic scavenger world run by raider gangs.
rork
February 16, 2012 at 3:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not to detract from the main conclusion of nut, but I have a small concession.
I think Christian religion (perhaps particularly post-Luther) helped lead to the rise of desire for more equality. The soil seemed prepared a bit. Perhaps not liberty, but getting to a democracy from some other religions might be harder. Maybe that’s Tocqueville, but I never steal – it’s an homage.
kermit.
February 16, 2012 at 3:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here in the US at least, we seculars (interchangeable with atheists as far as this woman is concerned) will be the first to go. US citizens would sooner vote for a gay politicians than an atheist.
Then perhaps a couple of newer cults, like the Mormons, follwed by the older cults will focusing on the Muslim-Christian split. Later the remaining major war will be among either Sunni-Shia-Sufi or Eastern Orthodox-Roman Catholic-Protestant, depending on who’s left at this point. Etc.
Eventually it will get to the stage where they say, “Woman, you were a help during the revolution, but now you should show repentance for your uppity, talkative ways”.
Heaven help the atheist lesbian! Ummmm…
reasonbeing
February 16, 2012 at 3:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I was asked earlier if I thought the world was becoming more religious. I am not sure of the answer to that. I am sure of one thing, the world’s religions are becoming more crazy. I agree with all of your arguments regarding the need to overcome religious objections to achieve social progress. The question I would have for her, is, “If Europe becomes more Christian, where does that leave Islam? Do you think a strong Christian faith will be tolerant to Islam? (If yes, I refer you to the Christian Right in the U.S.). This is insanity in my opinion. It is another last ditch effort for the religious to try and stay relevant in a world where it is getting harder and harder to keep up with science.
davidbrown
February 16, 2012 at 4:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m not the first one to point this out, but it strikes me as very ironic: what would the chance of a female, muslim, daughter of immigrants becoming a life peer and cabinet minister have been in a much more Christian Britain? It was precisely secularism that gave her the opportunities she enjoys today.
Alareth
February 16, 2012 at 4:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s off topic, but I’m going to drop this here
Republican Hearing on Contraception: No Women Allowed
heironymous
February 16, 2012 at 4:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Alareth – I can’t believe that’s not getting more play.
I frontpaged it on my Facebook page as soon as I saw it.
@rork
Are you sure that’s not a chicken and egg scenario – aka, the improvement in the economy and lives in general led to a desire for more freedom/equality which led to the Reformation.
Most religion is conservative, which usually stands against progress.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Gynofascist in a Spiffy Hugo Boss Uniform
February 16, 2012 at 4:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chiroptera:
Right-wing Christians, Jews, and Muslims are already all too happy to work together on these issues and have been for some years now.
As for Warsi, it seems she has a reputation for being a loon.
Brain Hertz
February 16, 2012 at 4:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m no fan of Warsi, but why did you put “baroness” in scare quotes? She does legitimately have that title…
slc1
February 16, 2012 at 5:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re #14
Interestingly enough, before the start of a gay pride parade in Jerusalem several years ago, fundamentalist Muslim Imans and ultra orthodox Jewish rabbis, who ordinarily wouldn’t be caught dead talking to each other, came to an agreement that Muslims would start a riot several miles away from the parade route in order to draw the police away from the parade so that Jews could disrupt it. Religion, the root of all evil.
Marcus Ranum
February 16, 2012 at 5:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Anyone who wants to call herself “Baroness” has no business also claiming to be concerned with a “just society” – FAIL.
Who Cares
February 16, 2012 at 5:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Does it need to be contemporary?
Brain Hertz
February 16, 2012 at 6:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Why? It isn’t a hereditary title.
Would you say the same thing about anybody with the title “Senator” or “Justice”?
rogerallen
February 16, 2012 at 6:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
At any time.
Mediaeval muslim societies were generally less intolerant and less unjust than mediaeval christian societies. That doesn’t mean they were tolerant or just or protected freedom, justice and equality.
davem
February 16, 2012 at 7:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Because Senators and Justices get elected. Baroness Warsi doesn’t have a barony, merely an invented title. She was appointed a baroness for political expediency reasons, and represents nobody except the Tory party. Personally, I don’t think that is ‘legitimate’ outside of the pedantic meaning of the word. She rails against the very secularism that got her her job. It certainly wasn’t talent that got her there.
Brain Hertz
February 16, 2012 at 7:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Justices don’t get elected. That’s why I picked it as an example.
chrisdevries
February 16, 2012 at 7:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This woman is demonstrating the mental compartmentalisation and hypocrisy that is common to all authoritarian followers. It does not occur to these people to cross-check information they have in their brains against other information to ensure there is no contradiction. Furthermore, much of the information these types of people have in their heads was dictated to them by trusted authorities and not arrived at through a process of careful inquiry. So secularism can be evil at the same time as the success of secularism is allowing Ms. Warsi the opportunity to not only have a position of power, but to share her bizarre opinions with the rest of us.
Religious wingnuts don’t know any atheists typically, and they certainly don’t listen to any they happen to know. So how would they find out that most atheists are not in favour of “banning religion”, and that in fact most of us would fight to maintain peoples’ right to practise their faith (or to not practise any faith at all) on their own, or with likeminded individuals (in church, etc.)? They are simply told that atheists want to ban all religion, and take it on faith (as all information received from authority must be taken until it is confirmed through evidence). And anyway, while there may be a handful of authoritarian atheists who wish to forcibly ban all religion, by definition, (rational) secularists could never support this position. All secularists want to do is ensure that no individual religion is favoured or discriminated against by the government or any public institutions. There are many Christian secularists out there, believe me, I’ve met a few. If the UK governments started being anti-secularism by proudly implementing Christian traditions in their proceedings and Christian beliefs in their law-making (as Ms. Warsi seems to want), that would be favouritism, and by default, discrimination against those of every other faith, and those of no faith. Why on Earth would a Muslim ask to be discriminated against?
The nonsensical gibberish spewed from a highly-compartmentalised mind is baffling to any rational person, but Ms. Warsi would never notice how inconsistent her beliefs are as they are dogmatic in nature. When successfully implemented, dogmatic beliefs are immune to criticism or contradictory evidence.
I am, however, ecstatic at the public response to her insanity: something like 90% of the nearly 2000 comments I read on the BBC website left in response to this article showed incredulous disdain for Ms. Warsi’s statements. Many also expressed hope that the current secularist trend will drive religion to the margins, and happiness at the news that the RDF study showed that many people who reported they were “Christian” on the last census did it because it is the religion they were baptized in or because it was their parents’ belief, NOT because they believe the tenets of Christianity. Lack of belief amongst Brits is likely more common than belief in any individual doctrine.
I cannot wait for similar news to come from the USA.
Cupcake
February 16, 2012 at 9:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ahhhh. Christians, Jews, and Muslims uniting together… Sounds like a great idea….
Hang on, haven’t they been uniting together in warfare against each other in the Middle East for hundreds of years now?
How is that working out?
Imagine how much smoother things would be if the the Jews really went hard core, and so did their Muslim neighbours.
And the same for the Christians and Muslims in Sudan for example, lets just turn up the dial on religious zealotry and see how things go. Maybe they can join back together and have a group hug perhaps?
pelamun
February 16, 2012 at 10:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just a desperate goddist, trying to stem the tide. The train has left the station a long time ago in Europe…
Pen
February 17, 2012 at 12:15 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m pretty comfortable in my identity as a militantly secular European atheist. There, sorted!
coryat
February 17, 2012 at 1:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah we hard-nosed -secular- militant- atheist- Brits don’t get it all our own way. State church, religious assemblies in schools, cranky CofE bishops, Stephen Green and this latest lunacy.
Just what a country toiling under the Tories needs – more tradition, more religion!
ryan
February 17, 2012 at 1:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Unfortunately people have a tendency to unite against the bogeyman, it’s happened plenty of times before. Things normally fall apart afterwards though, but that would be cold comfort for all us aethists after we’ve been burned at the stake.
scifi1
February 17, 2012 at 2:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The problem for Warsi is her diet.
She lacks the essential vitamins, I and H.
In layman’s terms, Vitamin Irony and Vitamin Hubris.
She is a loathsome piece of work. Fatuous and bigoted she has completely undermined a whole body of work being done at a local level to instil a tolerant attitude in the population where intolerance is rapidly becoming the norm. She was completely and hopelessly out of her depth as a parliamentary candidate, but many are happy that she spouts frequently and spitefully from her pedestal as she presents with vigour the very face of religion that, according to the RDFRS/MORI poll, people are turning away from.
scaryduck
February 17, 2012 at 3:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Let me show you the front page of the Daily Telegraph newspaper which published Warsi’s comments
On yer left, Warsi says “militant secularists are threatening Britain”. On yer right, a picture of Abu Qatada,
a well-known militant secularistan Al-Qaeda terrorist suspect just released from prison, once dubbed ‘Bin Laden’s right-hand-man’.Oh, irony.
scifi1
February 17, 2012 at 5:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
scaryduck…
Tut, tut, tut.
You know Abu Qatada is not a reeeeaaaal muslim! Only ‘Warti’ can tell you what a reeeeeaaaal muslim is, you heretic, blasphemer, apostasisisisistis…thingy.
laurentweppe
February 17, 2012 at 5:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You know the biggest irony about this is? This is a popular meme among the european wingnuts: they claim that somehow, democracy and secularism and enlightenment were part of Christianity -and only Christianity- DNA. Of course, this is yet another coded message meaning “White people are superior!”: Sayeeda Warsi, who is of Pakistani descent, is actually pandering to a crowd which would gladly reduce her to serfdom if they had the power to do so.
dingojack
February 17, 2012 at 5:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
scifi1 – When referring to a poll it helps to provide a link to that poll.
Why should a reader have to search around to get the evidence you can be bothered to cite, but not to show?
YOU made the claim, YOU provide the evidence to back that claim.
Dingo
nemothederv
February 17, 2012 at 5:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh noes….they’re on to our secret plan to bring them all down. Time to execute order 66….
It’s nice when when you get to frame the argument and set all of the definitions.
Obama isn’t preventing religious institutions from controling what your insurance covers. That would be silly. He’s really oppressing your religious freedom.
Virginia isn’t forcing unneeded medical procedures on women. Their really making sure women know the truth about
baby killingabortion.Jessica isn’t suing to make a point about the illegality of a religious sign in a government building. She’s trying to force her secularists views on us god loving people.
Yeah sure, we secularists are starting to take over. Everthing is going our way. I better stop or I’m going to strain my sarcasm muscle.
Hairy Chris, blah blah blah etc
February 17, 2012 at 5:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Warsi is an idiot, but one thing that this nonsense has done is given a platform for the NSS and BHA to slap her arguments around in public.
rogerallen
February 17, 2012 at 7:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Surely she’s o.d.ed on hubris, Scifi1?
Ataraxic
February 17, 2012 at 8:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
On the other hand, the British human rights watchdog, Trevor Phillips, has stated that religious rules should end at the temple door.
article here
The comments are enough to make you cry. The poll could do with our help too.
dingojack
February 17, 2012 at 8:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ataraxic – as a wise man once said: “Don’t Panic”.
:) Dingo
——
Love the handle BTW!
Chiroptera
February 17, 2012 at 8:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
laurentweppe, #34: Sayeeda Warsi, who is of Pakistani descent, is actually pandering to a crowd which would gladly reduce her to serfdom if they had the power to do so.
Well, if Western tradition is anything to go by, they’d break her kneecaps to force her to acknowledge Jesus as the one and true religion. Then, if they were feeling kind, they’d strangle her to death before burning her at the stake.
KG
February 17, 2012 at 9:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In the UK, serious religious believers of all kinds, Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Sikh/Hindu/whatever, and reactionary, conservative or liberal, tend to huddle together for warmth, and to rage at atheists and secularists – even though their real enemy is the widespread and still increasing indifference to their incoherent and mutually contradictory babblings. In religious terms, the majority, or at least the largest minority (often describing themselves as “Christian” on forms, but not believing in most of the central Christian dogmas), are the I-suppose-I-think-there-must-be-some-sort-of-somethingists, who of course never let this supposition affect what they do in their everyday lives.
scifi1
February 17, 2012 at 11:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
rogerallen –
Quite right; I should have said “Unaware she was overdoing the Vit. H”. I sit corrected!
Dingo –
Fair call. I made an assumption (silly me!) that most would be aware of the poll around this and like forums. Will keep in mind for future. Just a request, though – the capitalised admonition in your comment came across as belligerent. We’re not at loggerheads here. A simple request would have garnered the same response. If I have overstated your intention, I apologise in advance.
Wingnuttery: U.K. Edition « Foster Disbelief
February 17, 2012 at 3:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[...] my favorite blog, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, comes proof that batshit insanity isn’t only a product of the United States. Sayeeda Warsi, [...]
Allies | Butterflies and Wheels
February 17, 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[...] Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars on the same subject: What world does she live in? The progress over the last couple hundred in creating more just, free and equal societies is largely the result of the diminishing of religious influence over governments. At nearly every turn and in every country, the most important advances in freedom and equality — ending slavery, giving women the right to vote, protecting the equal rights of racial, ethnic, sexual and, yes, religious minorities — have required overcoming the opposition of the dominant religious creeds and dogmas. [...]
muslim
March 19, 2012 at 11:21 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
muslim…
[...]Muslims and Christians Team Up To Target Secularists | Dispatches from the Culture Wars[...]…