The Telegraph (Calcutta)
THE TROUBLE WITH RELIGION
Wherever religions get into society’s driving seat, tyranny
results
by Salman Rushdie
Exception to European secularism
I never thought of myself as a writer about religion until a
religion came after me. Religion was a part of my subject,
of course – for a novelist from the Indian subcontinent,
how could it not have been? But in my opinion I also had
many other, larger, tastier fish to fry. Nevertheless, when
the attack came, I had to confront what was confronting me,
and to decide what I wanted to stand up for in the face of
what so vociferously, repressively and violently stood
against me.
Now, 16 years later, religion is coming after us all and,
even though most of us probably feel, as I once did, that we
have other, more important concerns, we are all going to
have to confront the challenge. If we fail, this particular
fish may end up frying us.
For those of us who grew up in India in the aftermath of the
Partition riots of 1946-1947, following the creation of the
independent states of India and Pakistan, the shadow of that
slaughter has remained as a dreadful warning of what men
will do in the name of God. And there have been too many
recurrences of such violence in India – in Meerut, in Assam
and most recently in Gujarat. European history, too, is
littered with proofs of the dangers of politicized religion:
the French Wars of Religion, the bitter Irish troubles, the
"Catholic nationalism" of the Spanish dictator Franco and
the rival armies in the English Civil War going into battle,
both singing the same hymns.
People have always turned to religion for the answers to the
two great questions of life: Where did we come from? and how
shall we live? But on the question of origins, all religions
are simply wrong. The universe wasn't created in six days by
a superforce that rested on the seventh. Nor was it churned
into being by a sky god with a giant churn. And on the
social question, the simple truth is that, wherever
religions get into society's driving seat, tyranny results.
The Inquisition results, or the taliban.
And yet religions continue to insist that they provide
special access to ethical truths, and consequently deserve
special treatment and protection. And they continue to
emerge from the world of private life – where they belong,
like so many other things that are acceptable when done in
private between consenting adults but unacceptable in the
town square – and to bid for power. The emergence of
radical Islam needs no redescription here, but the
resurgence of faith is a larger subject than that.
In today's United States, it's possible for almost anyone –
women, gays, African-Americans, Jews – to run for, and be
elected to, high office. But a professed atheist wouldn't
stand a popcorn's chance in Hell. Hence the increasingly
sanctimonious quality of so much American political
discourse: the current president, according to Bob Woodward,
sees himself as a "messenger" doing "the Lord's will", and
"moral values" has become a code phrase for old-fashioned,
anti-gay, anti-abortion bigotry. The defeated Democrats also
seem to be scurrying toward this kind of low ground, perhaps
despairing of ever winning an election any other way.
According to Jacques Delors, former president of the
European Commission, "The clash between those who believe
and those who don't believe will be a dominant aspect of
relations between the US and Europe in the coming years."
In Europe the bombing of a railway station in Madrid and the
murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh are being seen
as warnings that the secular principles that underlie any
humanist democracy need to be defended and reinforced. Even
before these atrocities occurred, the French decision to ban
religious attire such as Islamic headscarves had the support
of the entire political spectrum. Islamist demands for
segregated classes and prayer breaks were also rejected. Few
Europeans today call themselves religious – only 21 per
cent, according to a recent European Values Study, as
opposed to 59 per cent of Americans, according to the Pew
Forum. In Europe the Enlightenment represented an escape
from the power of religion to place limiting points on
thought, while in America it represented an escape into the
religious freedom of the New World – a move toward faith,
rather than away from it. Many Europeans now view the
American combination of religion and nationalism as frightening.
The exception to European secularism can be found in
Britain, or at least in the government of the devoutly
Christian, increasingly authoritarian Tony Blair, which is
now trying to steamroller Parliament into passing a law
against "incitement to religious hatred" in a cynical
vote-getting attempt to placate advocates for British
Muslims, in whose eyes almost any critique of Islam is
offensive. Journalists, lawyers and a long list of public
figures have warned that this law will dramatically hinder
free speech and fail to meet its objective – that it would
increase religious disturbances rather than diminish them.
Blair's government seems to view the whole subject of civil
liberties with disdain: what do freedoms matter, hard won
and long cherished though they may be, when set against the
requirements of a government facing re-election?
And yet the Blairite policy of appeasement must be defeated.
Perhaps the British House of Lords will do what the Commons
failed to do, and send this bad law to the scrap heap. And,
though this is more unlikely, maybe America's Democrats will
come to understand that in today's 50/50 America they may
actually have more to gain by standing up against the
Christian Coalition and its fellow travellers, and refusing
to let a Mel Gibson view of the world shape American social
and political policy. If these things do not happen, if
America and Britain allow religious faith to control and
dominate public discourse, then the Western alliance will be
placed under ever-increasing strain, and those other
religionists, the ones against whom we're supposed to be
fighting, will have great cause to celebrate.
Victor Hugo wrote, "There is in every village a torch: the
schoolmaster – and an extinguisher: the parson." We need
more teachers and fewer priests in our lives because, as
James Joyce once said, "There is no heresy or no philosophy
which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being." But
perhaps the great American lawyer Clarence Darrow put the
secularist argument best of all. "I don't believe in God,"
he said, "because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
