Friday 17 January 2014

Mosques and masjids

Recently it was announced that this city will soon have its first mosque - or "masjid" as Muslims insist on calling it. This has provoked a rather predictable debate in the local media and coffee shops along entirely predictable lines. Critics argue that mosques and Muslims have no place in our culture and mumble dark warnings about terrorists and jihadists etc. Others like to point out that while Muslims are busily buildings their "masjids" here in Australia, Christians are certainly not being allowed to build churches in Muslim countries: on the contrary, Christians have never been so persecuted and oppressed as they are today in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Then there are objectors who are less ideological: they think the new mosque will cause traffic and parking problems and lower housing values.

All of this, as I say, is predictable. In almost every town and city in the country where a mosque has been built, you will find the same objections and hear the same arguments. No surprises at all. What I always find curious, though, are those people who are vociferous in their support for the new mosque. The anti- people and their motives are familiar enough. Many of them are Christians and they have a religious antipathy to Islam. Others are simply displaying an old fashioned xenophobia, a fear of the foreign. But what of those people who are fervently in favour of the mosque? What are their motives? I don't mean local Muslims, of course. Obviously they support the new mosque. Rather, I am curious about those people writing to the newspapers and holding forth over their lattes who are neither Muslims nor indeed religious at all; often, in fact, they are anti-religious people. So why, I wonder, would they want a mosque in their community?

This is something I have always found puzzling. In my former incarnation, working at the local university, I was an advocate for the Muslim students and often held positions on committees and working groups where I encountered this same phenomenon. The strongest supporters of Muslims and their interests were people who I knew to be viciously anti-religious. Often, in fact, I knew first-hand that these same people were agitating against the courses in which I was teaching - namely Religious Studies - because they were activist secularists who believed that no religion should be taught in Universities at all. I found myself sitting on panels and committees with them and watched puzzled as they demanded equal rights for Muslims and huffed and puffed about "inclusiveness" and so on. As I say, I knew these people to be atheist bigots with a passionate hatred of all religion. Why were they so keen to advance the cause of Muslims on campus? The incongruities were quite bizarre. Here were radical feminists arguing for the veil and animal liberationists arguing for halal slaughter. In this context, they were on my side, and their support was welcome. But it always made me feel very uneasy. I always wanted to say to them: "What is it to you? Why do you support Muslims on campus? What makes you so passionate about it?"

The answer they would provide was the single word: multiculturalism. "We support a multicultural campus," they would say. Fine, but I was still left feeling uneasy. I always suspected nefarious motives. When you see atheists getting behind a religious group you have to ask why, and the idea of "multiculturalism" doesn't really answer anything. The plainest example of the incongruity was the annual hooplah about Christmas. It could only happen in the phoney atmosphere of academia, but whenever anyone dared to say 'Happy Christmas' or similar, the atheists would go into a lather and denounce such utterances as "offensive" to "secularism". But they would also use Muslims as an excuse. Christmas, they would argue, offends our Muslim students. That's why we have to ban it. To say 'Happy Christmas' is a cultural imposition that offends multiculturalism. What about the Buddhists? And the Hindus? What about the Muslims? To celebrate Christmas, they said, offends our international students.

Not that I noticed. It wasn't Muslims (or Hindus or Buddhists) who hated Christmas. It was atheists who claimed to be speaking on their behalf.

What was their motivation? In the end, I concluded it was just vandalism and self-loathing. They just wanted to use Muslim students as a way of attacking Christians. That's all it was. They didn't really have any interest in the welfare of Muslim students. Nor did they have the slightest sympathy for any aspect of Islam. Indeed, by any measure, nearly everything about Islam is - or should be - deeply offensive to them, from belief in an interventionist, totalitarian deity, to women's rights. It was really quite extraordinary to watch these religion haters being all smiley and warm and affectionate about Islam. Their motives were devious. They welcomed and supported Muslims on campus purely as a way of getting at the Christians who they hated with a genuine passion.

The same motives are behind the local supporters of the new mosque. I see them in the newspapers and on social media. 'We support a local mosque!' they trumpet. I want to ask, 'Why? What's it to you?' The fact is, that what it is to them is a way of scoring points against the white anglo-saxon culture they despise. It happens to be their own culture, of course. They themselves are affluent white anglo-saxons. But they hate white anglo-saxons and white anglo-saxon history, language and culture. That's what I mean by self-loathing. They loath the very culture that has made them affluent and prosperous. And they are intent on vandalizing it. Actually, they hate Islam too. They hate all religion. But they are happy to use Muslims to "smash the cultural hegemony"of Christianity. They want a local mosque in order to insult and upset the local Christians. It is as petty as that. Their motives are dishonest and dishonourable. In that sense, their support for "multiculturalism" is toxic.

At the end of my tenure at the University I had withdrawn from my support roles to Muslim students. Amongst other things, I didn't like this hypocrisy. The Muslims were sincere people, but some of their supporters among the white anglo-saxon staff in the system were not. They had hidden motives. They were using the rights of Muslim students to advance a different, hidden agenda. That agenda is, basically, to trash the culture and history  and traditions of white anglo-saxon Australia which they regard as inherently criminal (ignoring the paradox that they themselves are a product of it.)

I support a local mosque. But there are mosques, and then there are masjids. It is perfectly proper for local people to be cautious about what sort of mosque this might be. There are many different Muslim organisations actively building mosques in Australia. Islam is not a single church. There are moderate groups and more extreme groups . Then there are extremist fringe groups that hang around the edges of moderate mosques. There is a wide spectrum. It is proper to ask questions. I'd like to know how much Saudi Arabian money is being supplied, for example, and with what strings attached?

On the whole, though, I don't share the fears of xenophobes. But nor am I a post-modernist. I believe in diversity AND cohesion. In my view, you want a local Muslim congregation that adds to the diversity of the city but, importantly, is also anxious to be part of the city and part of a cohesive culture. Not all Muslim organisations are like that. What you don't want are Muslims who indulge in the same hatreds and antipathies as their latte-slurping tertiary-educated anglo-saxon supporters

Speaking personally, I have every right to love Islam, and I do. That makes me all the more cautious about what ilk of Muslims we are talking about. And it doesn't mean I hate the West. What worries me are the atheist secularist God-haters who purport to love Islam and who clammer for a mosque here. I respect the views of local Christians, even where they are mistaken. They, at least, are not disingenuous. This is, after all, a predominantly Christian city. If a mosque is to go well here, there must be a proper relationship between the Christians and the Muslims. Finally, both of those faith communities must wake up to their common enemy, the godless relativists and their project to vandalize tradition.

As it happens, from what I have heard, those Muslim groups behind the local mosque are making considerable efforts to ensure it will fit into the city and are being sensitive to all local concerns and criticisms. 


Harper


Tuesday 14 January 2014

The Janitor's Labyrinth


This story closely resembles another story about which I have previously posted. The story is that a humble janitor dies and it is then discovered that they have laboured quietly, secretly, on a complex artwork for years, leaving on clue as to what he had in mind. In this case, a janitor who worked at a university in Japan left a maze - hand-drawn over 7 years - on a large sheet of paper. Whether or not there is a path through the maze is a matter of debate and speculation. Certainly, no one has found a path through yet. But it is a reasonable conjecture, I think, that since the janitor took such care constructing it over such a long time, that he allowed a path through. Pictures of the maze below.  - HMcAB





Thursday 2 January 2014

Suffrage and the Democracy Disease

Someone put it to me recently that the right to vote ought not be automatic but that it should be earned. As to how it should be earned, he was less sure, but he was adamant about the principle that the right to vote - suffrage - should not be bestowed without some measure of qualification and in that it should not be too easy. "People don't value the right to vote," he said, and noted the way young people often deliberately contrived to stay off the electoral roll as if it was a chore. The best way to restore value to the democratic system, he thought, was to impose limitations upon suffrage. It is a controversial notion, he admits, and he complained that people often misunderstood him on this, but he sincerely considered it important to restore the value of voting. Pressed on this, he didn't think that voting and citizenship should be necessarily linked. Citizenship, he thought, should only bestow the right to qualify for voting but the right to vote should be earned. In part, the context of this conversation was a brief chat about the proposal in Scotland to give 16 year olds the vote. My acquaintance regarded this as the maddest thing since haggis. The idea of extending franchise to 16yos is, he insists, utterly crazy. If he had his way, the opposite would be happening; only mature, responsible (and preferably educated) citizens would get the vote. He felt that a high proportion of voters were dim wits with no qualification to cast a sane judgment upon something as important as government.

I raised the historical objection to this: No taxation without representation. Even if a man is a brainless twit, and a thoroughly unwholesome character, surely the state cannot demand taxation from him without him having some say in how the state is to spend that money? Historically, it was once the case that good and hardworking citizens were being taxed by the state but were not entitled to vote. Only "decent", well-bred and "educated" people - the upper class - enjoyed the franchise. Democracy advocates argued - with some force, I feel - that if someone is paying tax then they ought to have the vote. Taxation without representation is unjust. So, if nothing else, I argued, the very act of paying tax ought to be qualification enough. And everyone pays tax. There's a goods and services (consumption) tax on everything. Everyone pays tax.

Since that conversation, these points have been stewing, along with a string of related ideas and questions. In particular, I was struck recently by an article proposing that at the current time only about 51% of Australian citizens actually pay net tax. It is an alarming figure. It means that some 49% of Australians collect more from the government than they contribute. As the article pointed out, it is much the same figure quoted - infamously - by Mitt Romney in his failed presidential campaign against Barack Obama. Nevertheless, it is true. What Mr Romney was alluding to is a simple economic fact. The conglomeration of government pensions, subsidies, incentives assistance schemes is so pervasive that combined with other factors such as an ageing population, nearly one in two people is a net burden upon society. I can verify this just by flicking through my list of phone contacts. I know a high proportion of people on welfare, or student loans, old age pension, disability payment, or in part-time employment, sickness benefits, and so on. I am not saying any of them are undeserving, but it is a conspicuous fact that our lifestyle has been increasingly unproductive and sheltered.

Romney's comments were especially controversial because he added that this 49% were never going to vote for him. Also true. And it exposes what I (given my Platonic credentials) sometimes characterize as the Democracy Disease. Democracy is such a sacred cow in our era that very few people stop to ask about its shortcomings. There is an obvious problem with democracy. It is this: in a democracy there is nothing to stop a certain class of people ( a very large class) from voting themselves a pension and then opposing any candidate or law that might deprive them of it. Or, to put it another way: in a democracy politicians invariable have recourse to electoral bribes. Welfare expands as politicians buy votes. There is no real mechanism in a democracy to prevent this. It is what has happened to liberal democracies everywhere. Eventually they face bankruptcy. The only way to prevent it is imposed "austerity". Eventually, it requires the force of a tyrant.

This is precisely why Plato warned that democracy is a prelude to tyranny. The demos sends the polis broke. The problem is in the extension of franchise. In the Republic, franchise is extended further and further as the State moves through a succession of constitutions. Eventually, just being a citizen is enough, and then citizenship is broadened as well. Soon, not only natural born citizens but recently arrived immigrant citizens are collecting a pension and living in a council flat. No politician dare touch them.

In the Australian experience, both sides of politics have been complicit in this process. Labor is always guilty of reckless largesse - because it has an ideological preference for big government - but one of the biggest vote buyers in our history was John Howard under whom there was a huge growth of useless middle class welfare. Never mind about small government rhetoric - government and the welfare culture have expanded under governments of all persuasions. At the same time, the revenue base has continued to shrink. Clearly, expanding welfare (if only because of an ageing population) with contracting revenue is unsustainable. The recent Labor governments stretched this to a diabolical extent. They introduced huge welfare schemes (Disability Insurance, Gonski School funding etc.) but, remarkably, their mining tax (designed to fund it all via the mining boom) was a complete fizzer. This was leading the country into severe debt. The Abbott government, on the other hand, is probably the first government I can remember with a genuine ideological commitment to smaller government. We'll see.

In any case, in the long run voters will always vote for a pension. (Even Socrates wanted a pension.) They'll support cuts to programs as long as they are other people's programs and not their own. Plainly, the entire democratic process and the general extension of franchise is not well-equipped for austerity. Ultimately, the only way to break the cycle is by coercion - austerity is imposed. As we have seen in Greece (home of democracy.)

Perhaps, I was thinking, the problem is that we have broken the nexus between taxation and representation. Perhaps the one requirement for voting should simply be that you pay income tax. If the old slogan was 'No taxation without representation' then perhaps the opposite should apply as well: no representation without taxation. Only those who contribute to the common weal have a say in how it is managed. If you want to vote, become a taxpayer. This would disenfranchise a lot of people, admittedly, but it is still a sound basis for a viable state while representation without taxation is not. Workers would be the main bloc of voters. It was workers who led the historical reforms under the slogan No taxation without representation. They appreciate the nexus between taxation and voting. Voting is their chance to have a say about how their tax dollars are spent.

What is the proper basis for voting? Once, it was gender. Or colour. Or race. And wealth. Now it is only restricted to adult citizens - or not even adult ones in Scotland. Inclusiveness is the catch-cry of our age. But inclusiveness does not necessarily craft good governance. A country can be as inclusive as it likes and still go broke. There are some these days - God help us - who want to obliterate all distinct identities so that the only quality that matters is mere humanness. This is implicit in many of the "ethics" sported by Human Rights ideologues. A person is a person is a person. As if people are just undifferentiated sludge. Some people want open borders, or no borders. Some people object to the concept of citizen per se. Why not let everyone vote who wants to vote, without distinction? If you can breathe, you can vote. Open slather democracy. When you go that far you reach the situation where you might as well have government by lot (sortition) as the ancient Athenian's did in the end.

Personally, being a landowner, I am rather nostalgic for the good old days when, at least, there was an upper house for the determination of landholders only. And why not? Why not invest an extra responsibility in people who actually own the soil of a country? I see nothing wrong with that, especially if it was coupled with the Australian dream of home-owning so that a vote in the upper house elections was within the grasp of most working people in their lifetime. Like my friend, I am not sold on the inviable sanctity of universal suffrage. But what criteria do we use to draw distinctions? Julia Gillard wanted 40% of Australian adults to have university degrees. Perhaps this could form the basis of an electoral college? Now, there's a truly terrifying vision!

Harper McAlpine Black