Tengatenga—Homophobe or Not?

This morning’s question: was James Tengatenga really the head of the Malawi Council of Churches, and if so, what was his position on the enforcement of the country’s sodomy laws, which assign five years of prison for females, and fourteen for males?

Whoa—you’re saying. Malawi? Tengatenga? And what’s the thing about sodomy?

OK—I confess it, I didn’t know a thing about Malawi either, though my computer, for once, didn’t red squiggle the word. But in my defense…oops, there is no defense. The country gained independence in 1964, so I certainly should have studied it—or at least run into it—in my elementary school days.

But first, here’s the map of Africa—locate South Africa, and then travel northeast.

Malawi is small, as you can see, and landlocked. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject: 

Malawi is among the world's least-developed countries. The economy is heavily based in agriculture, with a largely rural population. The Malawian government depends heavily on outside aid to meet development needs, although this need (and the aid offered) has decreased since 2000. The Malawian government faces challenges in building and expanding the economy, improving education, health care, environmental protection, and becoming financially independent. Malawi has several programs developed since 2005 that focus on these issues, and the country's outlook appears to be improving, with improvements in economic growth, education and healthcare seen in 2007 and 2008.

Malawi was a single-party state whose ruler, Hastings Banda, stayed in power for thirty years. It’s currently a multi-party state, headed by Joyce Banda (no relation).

OK, you say, I’ve joined the rest of the group on geography—now fill me in on James Tengatenga.

He was, up until very recently, an Anglican bishop, and quite an important one. Here’s Reuters on the subject:

He served as diocesan bishop of Southern Malawi and chair of the Worldwide Anglican Communion's Anglican Consultative Council, a network of 44 churches.

According to some, Tengatenga’s views on LGBT issues are moderate, at least by sub-Saharan standards; this is what Boston.com has to say:

Close observers of gay rights issues in Africa say Tengatenga has been an ally who has publicly opposed the most virulently anti-gay pronouncements of other African bishops, and that he played a crucial role in keeping the Anglican Communion from splitting apart in the aftermath of Robinson’s election.

He has other supporters as well; here’s the Boston Globe:

The Rev. Kapya John Kaoma, who has conducted extensive research on religion and sexuality in Malawi and other African countries for Political Research Associates, said Tengatenga is widely considered a friend to gay activists there. In 2010, Tengatenga organized bishops from Southern Africa to put out a statement countering an assertion by other African bishops encouraging governments to criminalize homosexuality, Kaoma said.

Why is all of this important?

Dartmouth College initially offered the position of dean of the William Jewett Tucker Foundation; one source said that the dean is the moral and spiritual head of the Dartmouth community.

And Tengatenga accepted the position; he then resigned from his position as bishop. At that point the news erupted, or the controversy started. The LGBT group at Dartmouth wanted to know—where, in a region that is among the most homophobic in the world, did Tengatenga stand?

And there was some reason to think that he stood, well, where the LGBT community didn’t want him to stand. Again, here’s boston.com:

Controversy erupted after word circulated that Tengatenga opposed the 2003 election of the Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the Anglican Communion’s first openly gay bishop, and asserted in 2011 that Malawi’s Anglican provinces remained “totally against homosexuality.”

But, again from boston.com:

After accepting Dartmouth’s offer, the Rev. James Tengatenga last month resigned his post as bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Southern Malawi and publicly affirmed his support for marriage equality – a risky stance in Malawi, where homosexuality is punishable by up to 14 years in jail.

And was Tengatenga part of the Malawi Council of Churches? Because when the prime minister, Joyce Banda, tried to stop enforcement of the anti-homosexuality laws, she ran into a brick wall, mostly from the churches. The Independent says this:

Justice ministry sources said pressure from the Malawi Council of Churches, a group of 24 Protestant churches, forced the U-turn.

And from the website of the World Council of Churches, the Malawi Council of Churches has four Anglican Dioceses, including the Anglican Diocese of Southern Malawi, of which Tengatenga is bishop.

Oh, and that organization did speak out firmly. The Nyasa Times, curiously, won’t let me highlight in order to copy / paste (guys, you may be “Malawi breaking online news source” but even the New York Times, for God’s sake, lets me copy and paste….). But yup, they didn’t mince words, even going so far as to cite Leviticus 20:13. 

At the end, the new president of Dartmouth College rescinded the offer, at the urging of LGBT groups and the NAACP. Tengatenga offered a few stinging remarks.

The crux of the issue, to me, is stated here:

“You are asking the impossible of someone coming out of that African situation,” said the Rev. Nicholas Henderson, a parish priest in West London, an editor of Anglicanism.org, and a vice president of Modern Church, the oldest theological society in the Anglican Communion. “Just rescinding that [appointment] is to show a lamentable lack of understanding of circumstances that are outside the confines of privileged North America.”

There’s something a bit fishy here. It’s the old story, the story we were told in the seventies when the gay movement emerged. “Go slow, make alliances, change doesn’t come overnight, we need time to educate people,” went one chorus. The other chorus was singing, “out the politicians who are screwing boys in private and voting against gay rights in congress and state legislatures, picket the fundamentalist churches, get in people’s faces and scream for your rights.”

Oh, and this mention of “privileged North America?” No one is going to deny that Dartmouth is privileged; no one can deny that North America is privileged, though I wonder if Henderson is including—as he should—Mexico in North America. But it’s interesting—Malawi can have a female head of state; that’s wonderful. And quite progressive. So why can’t it at least decriminalize homosexuality?

And I’ve spent twenty minutes trying to find it on the Internet—the story of the shameless hounding out of a job and into a mental institution of a gay academic in the 1950’s. It was Smith College, but it could have been any Ivy League school.

Schools that have gone on to have gay studies programs, gay student organizations, gay student class presidents. Yes, we have different realities—but a fourteen-year prison sentence for consensual sex among adults? Does the reality of Southeastern Africa justify that? 

Tengatenga acknowledges that his views on homosexuality have been “evolving.” My first reaction? Bullshit. “Evolving” means holding back until there’s enough of a crowd; then you step in and claim your place at the head of the parade.

The old question—which chorus should you listen to, which chorus does the work?

Both. Nobody changes without a group making a radical demand for change, whereupon the conservatives turn to the group offering a moderate voice for change.

And Tengatenga?

As always—I don’t know. But that’s OK—questions are more important than answers.

Two Degrees of Separation

Until you’ve experienced it, it’s impossible to imagine how connected certain worlds are in Puerto Rico.

Consider—there are 3.7 million people in Puerto Rico; how can it be that everyone knows everyone else?

I exaggerate, of course, but not by much. And the first order of business of any two Puerto Ricans is to establish whom we both know in common, what high schools and universities we went to, anything that will make a bond, and assure us that we can cheerfully kiss and embrace at the end of trading reminisces about our friends in common. Six degrees of separation? Forget it—in Puerto Rico, it’s barely over two.

And when you get to the professional classes, it gets even lower.

“Tell Carlos Romero Barceló hello from Uncle Lemuel,” said Mr. Fernández, whom I had called from a party; I was using ex-governor Romero Barceló as bait to get Mr. Fernández to the party. Of course, Uncle Lemuel had been a law partner with Romero Barceló half a century ago; more to the point, Uncle Lemuel died before the turn of the century—but not a problem. He was still being social.

It was therefore no surprise that my friend Tony could tell me the whole story of the Sagardía family. They’re prominent on the island, and Antonio Sagardía is in the news, since he is expected to face charges of misuse of public funds, falsification of documents, and violation of government ethics. All this while he was in charge of the…

…Department of Justice.

I can hear the gasps of horror, of astonishment, out there. Yes, Horrified Readers, our top lawman, number three in the government, is going up against the very court system that he used to administer.

You’re wondering, perhaps, what the ex-Secretary of Justice did? Well, there was the little matter of the $7000 in credit card charges that the Comptroller deemed questionable.

“He whipped out a government credit card to pay $3.50 for two Tylenol for a headache he got while on a business trip,” Tony said.

“Well, was it an official headache?” I asked.

There are other charges as well. In May of 2009, Sagardía got into a shouting match with a legislator, when that legislator questioned why the Secretary of Justice was granting contracts to his former law firm, Aldaronda, López y Bras (Bras being a prominent family from Mayagüez, a member of which married Mr. Fernández’s sister—bijte?). Here’s the exchange, for which my mother—actually any mother—would have sent all parties to their rooms….

(My apologies for subjecting you to the infamous La Comay—but it was the only clip I could capture. Oh, and by the way, the fight begins at about minute 4….)

For those needing a bit of translation, the “gentleman” on the right is the legislator, Luis Vega Ramos, who has just asked why $25,000 this year, with an equal sum the following year, is going to Sagardía’s former law partner. “That’s my problem, not your problem,” replies Sagardía. Not so, retorts Vega Ramos, who points out that these are public funds.

You see how quickly it erupts—in five seconds, Sagardía is shouting at Vega Ramos not to point his finger at him. He then proceeds to call, in the words of Wikipedia, “a scoundrel, a chump lawyer, and an intellectual dwarf.”

What had provoked the response, and why was the Secretary so on edge?

Well, it had just been established that the Secretary had supported the release from prison of an ex-client of Sagardía’s former law partner. And not just a release—but Sagardía was arguing for a new trial. Ohh, and wanting the public to pay his old law firm to represent the ex-con….

It all gets down to a Latin thing—falta de respeto. It was one of the first phrases I learned in Spanish; I soon learned to invoke it in every discussion. Here’s how it works: at the first elevation of the emotional temperature, Puerto Rican men immediately raise the pitch of their voice by about a fifth—basses become tenors, tenors become altos. The hands are flying everywhere, and then something pisses off one or the other. In this case, was it the pointed finger? Was it the “my problem, not your problem?” It doesn’t matter—the term falta de respeto functions as the red cape in the bullring, with identical effects and consequences.

Well, Sagardía didn’t last long as Secretary of Justice; he resigned in October of 2009. And then guess what he did? He signed on as the lawyer for a woman, Ana Cacho, whose child was murdered 9 March 2010. But that wasn’t surprising, since Sagardía’s brother had represented Cacho’s primo hermano, literally a first brother, but actually a first cousin with whom you’ve grown up and whom you know like a brother.

Remember what I was saying about the degrees of connectivity in Puerto Rico?

Oh, and when did anybody ever hear about Ana Cacho’s primo hermano? In 2005, when he came to light in the investigation of the murder of Adam Anhang, the murdered rich Canadian whose widow was recently arrested in Spain, and is facing extradition. And what was the connection between Cacho and Anhang?

Business partners….

I rest my case.

Remeron 15 mg PO HS

Taí asks how I am doing.

Which person is she asking? For while most people have two personae, I have three: the waking, the sleeping, and the up-at-three-in-the-morning.

Up at three in the morning is nothing unusual, I know. Guys who worry about their mortgages, their jobs, their teenage kids—they all get up at three. And in this life, who’s not worrying about something?

My getting-up-at-three is slightly different. I take a pill, Remeron 15 mg PO HS, that is something like a date rape drug—it knocks me out, only to wake me up at three. And then, I am sacked with a craving for sweets. I’ve done coffee ice cream (Haagen-Dazs, $5.99 at CVS), jelly beans, (Jelly Belly, 30 flavors, $3.49 at CVS), mozzarella cheese (not a sweet, I know, but diabetes runs in the family, so I forced the change) and last night, pineapple chunks (so does high cholesterol, so I’m trying this).

The other unusual thing is that while up, I’m not in that three-in-the-morning worry state. I’ve done that, I know that; no, I’m quite happy, though I’d rather be back in bed, asleep. But I munch on, and sated, frequently fall asleep in my chair. I awaken (marginally) just enough to (usually) lurch back to bed.

This is not a problem—what is a problem is what this drug does remarkably well to avert. And that is depression, which is the worst disease possible in terms of the quality of life.

Nor is that me—that’s the word from an article I read years ago. It seems that you can have anything, diseases as terrible as Lou Gehrig’s Disease or Huntington’s Chorea and still have a better quality of life. Not having any major diseases to date, I can only trust the authorities.

But at three in the morning, I am frequently trawling the Internet, stumbling on interesting webpages, and emailing them to myself. This is my only clue, when I wake up four hours later, of who and what I am and have been doing. It’s my one glimpse into my shadow self.  And last night, apparently, I was listening to “Sure on this Shining Night,” by Samuel Barber.

It’s a song that is impossible not to love. And it comes with a story, which I must have read last night:

No doubt the popularity of "Sure on the Shining Night" was amplified by Barber's frequent retelling of an anecdote that directly involved the song. In 1979, Barber had just moved into a new apartment in New York City and needed to call home. He was trying to reach Gian Carlo Menotti, whom he knew was visiting the apartment. However, upon trying to dial the number from the telephone booth, Barber realized that he could not recall the newly established phone number. The composer contacted the operator for assistance who initially refused to provide Barber with the number, but confessed that she possessed a "weakness" for "Sure on this Shining Night" and requested that Barber sing the song's opening phrase to confirm his identity. Barber complied and was rewarded with his telephone number!

Right—a nice image, the composer singing his most famous song in a phone booth in New York.

Oh, and by the way, Gian Carlo Menotti was visiting? If so, Gian Carlo had been visiting for half a century, since the two met at Curtis as students, and they had been life companions ever since.

From Barber, I must have drifted off to Rockwell Kent, because I found that I had sent off the following illustration:

Nice, hunh? Then I sent on this:

Hmmm—pretty erotic; was Kent gay? Right, so I looked him up, and the answer is no—he had three wives, five kids, and was sexually promiscuous.

But his work must have reminded of another artist, Paul Cadmus, and boy, was he gay. Take a look at this:

Mmmmm. How about this:

All that and he can read, too! Now then, where’s that famous one, you know, the guy on the bicycle…. 

You talking about this?

Well, I must have been falling asleep. But why was I even up in the first place?

Because of this….

You're Safe There!

“You’ll never leave Puerto Rico,” said Ilia, my mother-in-law. “You’ll just stay here and laugh at it.”

I decided to take offense.

“My dear madam,” I said, “I would never, as you say, ‘laugh at Puerto Rico.’ Rather, I pay homage to Puerto Rico through laughter. It’s quite a different thing.”

“You love it here,” she said.

“I do. I spent decades finding a country that matched my internal landscape.”

“And that is?”

“A land of absurdity dotted with ridiculous….”

She got the point and we moved on; she’s really a very good mother-in-law.

I thought of the exchange yesterday, when I was busy reading the news about the water park in Arecibo, perhaps the ugliest of our large cities on the island.

The New Day, you see, had found the perfect story for a Monday morning. Do you seriously want to contemplate Syria, the loss of privacy, landslides and death on your way to work, presuming you still have such a thing as a job? Of course not, so the water park was the perfect story.

Now then, Reader, let me show you a lovely photo; a photo that you must clutch in your memory:

Never forget, Reader, the joy of these children, the innocence, the unfettered pleasure of these children, here in the Parque Acuático de Arecibo.

Ooooops, sorry, that’s the Arecibo Water Park.

It’s one of those wonderful things about Puerto Rico, where politics invades everything, language included. When the party favoring commonwealth, our current status, is in power, everything becomes nacional. You get Parques Nacionales, El Equipo Nacional de Puerto Rico—you get the picture. When the party favoring statehood takes over, all of the stuff above becomes territorial. Oh, and of course in English….

And now, sour individuals with their acid tongues are speaking snakes and toads (sapos y culebras) about the Arecibo Water Park! How dare they! What manner of creature could possibly criticize a facility giving such pleasure to children!

The matter of the lack of a permission permit from the Office of the Inspector General of Permits? Pah—a technicality, snorts the mayor of Arecibo, the honorable Carlos Molina, who inaugurated the park last July 15. Besides, they did apply for one, and I can give, any doubting Readers of this blog, the case number: 2013-197731-PUS-44034. Here’s the link—look it up yourself!

Right—got that taken care of! Now let’s get down to the matter of the electricity, which is supplied by 7 generators. Yes, of course they solicited the light company to install the light, but it seems that without that pesky use permit….

And what! You accuse me of stealing the water? Nonsense—the water company itself said that we could just hitch on to the water supply for the Parque Julio Rodríguez Olmo, for which we pay. How low, how dastardly—unleashing on me a swarm of technicalities, when all I was trying to do was to bring a moment’s joy to children!

So rants the mayor, who is stuck with a debt of $500,000 to pay the project contractor (his brother in law, perchance?). And to add insult to injury, now the water company is charging him a fine of $2000 dollars and the permit agency is socking him with a fine of $4200. Outrageous!

Predictably, the opposite party is standing on the high moral ground, looking down contemptuously at this cesspool of devious, underhanded crooks. Here’s what they say:

Ya es hora de que el presidente del PNP diga algo en contra de un líder de su partido que descaradamente se roba el agua y la luz, y engañó a los ciudadanos inaugurando una obra sin permisos”, manifestó Suárez Cáceres en declaraciones escritas.

“Este es el momento para que Pierluisi demuestre si tiene alguna voluntad de combatir la corrupción, o es cómplice de las acciones ilegales de Carlos Molina”, puntualizó.

I won’t, Reader, or rather I can’t. There are some things that can only be said in Spanish—English just won’t do it. Though I will say that descaradamente se roba el agua y la luz does mean shamelessly / brazenly robbing the water and electricity….

Well, the mayor isn’t taking this excrement hurled at him lying down. He points out, very legitimately, that he has a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency. Oh, and guess what! He has another one, as well.

Anxious Reader, tranquilize yourself (tranquilícese). The Arecibo Water Park? That park, at which there is water, water, water everywhere, splashing water, flowing water, gushing water? The water park? It does indeed have a permit, an important permit, a necessary permit from…

The Fire Department!

Bijte! (see?)

The Vivid Air

He’s a gay guy from perhaps the most homophobic country in the world—Jamaica—and he won an award named after the slain activist from a country that could also be the most homophobic country in the world—Uganda.

Well, Jamaica is in the news lately, since a transgendered teen, Dwayne Jones, was shot, stabbed, beaten and then run over by a car last weekend. Right—that’s pretty homophobic. But what’s even worse is that Jones’ father had driven him from the family home, and joined the group of neighbors who drove him from the neighborhood.

So he was living, this 16-year old kid, with three others in a derelict house in Montego Bay. He went to a party, was dancing, and someone noticed his feet, which were abnormally large for a woman’s. He tried to run; he didn’t get away.

What’s behind the persecution? Well, there’s a law dating from 150 years back banning sodomy. There was a tradition in colonial times of sodomizing black slaves as a form of punishment. There are the usual right-wing fundamentalists who have whipped up the masses in places like Uganda—remember Scott Lively? But Jamaica has found a native ingredient to toss into the usual stew—and that’s hate-mongering reggae singers.

Things are so bad for gay people in Jamaica that a lot of them are fleeing—or trying to. That’s what Maurice Tomlinson did when a local newspaper outed him; he immediately began receiving death threats. So he escaped to Canada, where he married his soul mate, Tom Decker.

“In Canada I have a husband, in Jamaica I have a good friend,” he said recently, when he also revealed that he’s had three death threats since the local Jamaican press published the news. So he no longer goes to bars or even parties—he’s under a modified, self-imposed house arrest.

The good news is that he won in 2012 the David Kato Vision and Voice Award. And that has given him, he says, a place at the table; with that, and the support of his organization…well, let him tell the story:

I was able to be a part of the first ever legal challenge to the Jamaican anti-sodomy law before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, successfully challenged Coca-Cola for their support of homophobic murder musicians in Jamaica, launched a constitutional claim against Jamaican television stations for their refusal to air a tolerance-themed ad in which I appear, confronted the government of Trinidad about its atrocious immigration law that bans the entry of marginalized groups such as the disabled, homosexuals and sex workers, and also traveled the world to share with other LGBT advocacy groups the hard-won skills I developed as an activist. It was also AIDS-Free World that nominated me for the David Kato Vision and Voice award. I simply could not have achieved my advocacy successes without them by my side. So I publicly thank AIDS-Free World and hope my successor has an equally supportive organization or group to call 'home.'

So who, you might ask, is David Kato?

Kato was the first openly gay Ugandan, a teacher, a man who had lived for six years in South Africa, which was more liberal. Returning to Uganda, Kato made the decision to come out, did so at a press conference, and got jailed for a week because of it. This, however, didn’t stop him—he went on to become one of the founding members of SMUG—Sexual Minorities Uganda. In 2010, he gave up teaching, and worked full time as an activist.

But the year before, he had attended a UN human rights conference. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

According to a series of confidential cables written by a Kampala-based United States diplomat and later released by WikiLeaks, Kato spoke during a November 2009 United Nations-funded consultative conference on human rights. During the conference, Kato spoke on the issue of LGBT rights and the anti-LGBT atmosphere in the country, but members of the Uganda Human Rights Commission "openly joked and snickered" during the speech, and a rumor circulated that David Bahati MP, the leading proponent of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill, had ordered the Inspector General of Police to arrest Kato, causing Kato and other attending members of SMUG to leave the conference immediately after he finished the speech. Bahati then made a "tirade against homosexuality" to the conference, resulting in massive applause and Martin Ssempa, an Evangelical Christian cleric, pounding his fist on the table in agreement.[7]

And then, a local newspaper published his name and address—as they did of a hundred other persons—in an inflammatory campaign to out gay people. (How inflammatory? If memory serves, one of the banners read, “HANG THEM!)

Kato took the newspaper to court—he won, and got a $600 settlement.

He never got to enjoy that 600 bucks; he was murdered shortly afterwards. But even after death, the insults continued. Back to Wikipedia for a description of the event:

Kato's funeral was held on January 28, 2011, in Nakawala. Present at the funeral were family, friends and co-activists, many of whom wore t-shirts bearing his photo in front, the Portuguese "la [sic] luta continua" in the back and having rainbow flag colors inscribed onto the sleeves.[19] However, the Christian preacher at the funeral preached against the gays and lesbians present, making comparisons to Sodom and Gomorrah, before the activists ran to the pulpit and grabbed the microphone from him, forcing him to retreat from the pulpit to Kato's father's house. An unidentified female activist angrily exclaimed "Who are you to judge others?" and villagers sided with the preacher as scuffles broke out during the proceedings. Villagers refused to bury Kato at his burial place; the task was then undertaken by his friends and co-workers, most of whom were gay.[20] In place of the preacher who left the scene after the fighting, excommunicated Anglican Church of Uganda bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo officiated Kato's burial in the presence of friends and cameras.

Right—that’s one you’d remember!

And who, by the way, is excommunicated Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo, and why is he excommunicated?

Well, he’s a theologian who studied at Union Theological Seminary and was ordained at St. John the Divine. He’s an LGBT activist who got into a scrap with the archbishop, who turned around and excommunicated him.

 Homosexuality is illegal in more than 70 countries, but that’s the least of the problem. What’s truly scary is that there are places in the world—Russia, Jamaica, Uganda—where LGBT people live very realistically in fear for their lives. And there are people like David Kato and Maurice Tomlinson who—against all odds, despite the churning stomachs, the sweaty palms, the dry mouths—find the courage to stand up, speak out, tell the truth to power.

Women and men who leave the vivid air, as the poet said, signed with their honor.

Passports to Many Countries

OK—first off. I tremble to write this post, because if Irshad Manji reads this it, and troubles to respond, she’ll wipe me off the map. She’s both smarter and tougher than I.

And who is Irshad Manji? Well, many people in the Arab world have an answer—she’s an infidel, a heretic, a traitor. Or, some would say, she’s a person who’s finally had the guts to speak some unpleasant truths.

Some months ago, I was trying to write a review in Amazon.com, since a number of Iguana readers were having trouble uploading their reviews. Not having read anything recently, I decided to review the King James Bible. (It seemed fair—I had read it, though years ago, and it’s a text that has survived for a substantial amount of time. I doubted anything that I could say would seriously hurt it….) I went to the page, scrolled down, and was startled to find that 46 people had give it one star, Amazon’s lowest level. Here’s my favorite:

444 of 534 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars

Far too pornographic for a Christian home!, October 6, 2012

By 

Mrs. Betty Bowers "Mrs. Betty Bowers, America... - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holy Bible: King James Version (Hardcover)

I simply refuse to poison my Christian children's precious minds with lascivious tales of daughters getting their father drunk and having sex with him (Genesis 19:30-38) - or harlots lusting after penises that are the size of donkeys' (Ezekiel 23:20). It is, however, excellent for cracking nuts and slapping bottoms.

I tell you this story because a surprising number of Christians are treating the Bible as…well, a sort of supplemental text. Or perhaps additional reading, if wanted.

Right, you say. But what does this have to do with Irshad Manji?

Well, to put words into the lady’s mouth—something certainly unnecessary and probably dangerous—it’s interesting that Christians can do that, and yet a Muslim doing the same with the Quran? In Canada, yes—but how about Saudi Arabia? I bring you The Australian:

A FAMILY row that developed into a televised debate in Saudi Arabia has ended in disaster for a young activist now facing seven years in jail and 600 lashes, as the kingdom continues to crack down on online dissent.

Raif Badawi, 30, founder of a liberal website, has been sentenced by a court in Jedda - convicted of insulting Islam and denouncing the kingdom's feared religious police. A charge of apostasy that could have carried the death penalty was dropped.

Tacked on to those offences was a charge of "parental disobedience", stemming from a bitter dispute between Badawi and his father. The row became so ugly that among those denouncing his son as an apostate was Badawi's father himself.

I read about it at the time, and then considered writing about it. I didn’t, partly out of politically correct fear of playing into Islam / Muslim bashing, and partly because, well, what is there to say? It’s ridiculous and outrageous; now, what about the other 998 words in my post?

It’s a problem I’ve had with the some parts of the Muslim world for some time. A Danish cartoonist draws an offensive cartoon—embassies burn and 100 people die in Nigeria alone in violence related to the affair. This we have to take seriously?

Manji wrote a book, The Trouble with Islam Today, in which she provides the answer—the Muslims. And I saw her defend her beliefs in a great show from Al Jazeera English called Head to Head; it was filmed in temperate waters of the Oxford Union.

Well, she was bright and articulate, as well as quite passionate. And I had come to her through music, specifically through Daniel Barenboim, the pianist and conductor. Barenboim spent ten years in Argentina before his parents moved to Israel in 1952. And speaking of courage, he’s fully the equal of Manji—would you have the balls to break a decades long prohibition of playing Wagner in Israel?

Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival,[40] had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works.[41] In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous," and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust."

Said was Muslim, and went on to become friends with Barenboim, and later to write a book with him.

Oh, and the two also dreamed up the idea of an orchestra that would have both Jewish and Muslim members. So they started the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999, and it was not always smooth—discussion between the players could get very heated.

Barenboim is believed to be the only person who holds citizenship in both Israel and Palestine. What would happen if all of us did?

A Man of the Word, a Man of the Lab

I used to feel bad about it—taking 45 minutes to watch a documentary, or—in this case—a debate. Why waste that time—shouldn’t I be writing? And even if what I’m watching will eventually turn into what I’m writing, I still felt guilty.

But I found the clip below riveting at all times, and especially because the “presenter” (as he is described in Wikipedia, Medhi Hasan, a devout Muslim, really takes the atheist Richard Dawkins on. In fact, it’s by no means certain who won the debate.

Highlights: at about 14:30, the following exchange takes place:

Dawkins: Do you actually believe that Mohammed split the moon in half? Do you actually believe that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse?

Hasan: Yeah I do, I believe in God, I believe in miracles, I

believe in revelation.

Dawkins can’t get it—he is so absolutely committed to the scientific method and the supremacy of reason that he cannot conceive of any rational person believing the above or, later on when talking to a Christian monk, the reality of the transubstantiation.

Confession—neither can I. Although I’ve always admired Flannery O’Connor’s comment on the transubstantiation: “well, if it’s just symbolic, I say to hell with it!”

It’s clear—the debate in the video clip is 47 minutes of high speed, high-powered super trains racing in opposite directions on parallel tracks.

A little later, Hasan takes on Dawkins on the following quote:

Horrible as the sexual abuse in the Catholic church was, the damage was arguably less than the damage of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.

Dawkins adduces a letter he had gotten from a victim of sexual abuse from a priest, who had also told her that her 7-year old friend, who had just died, was then in hell, since her friend had been Protestant. The woman claimed that the sexual abuse, though bad, had not been as bad as the nightmares she had had of her friend burning in hell for all eternity.

Hasan nails him, saying that Dawkins is an empiricist—would he accept one instance of something as proof that it were generally true? The two lock horns, with Hasan pounding him with the question, at the end, “is teaching my daughter about religion and the prophet Mohammed flying to the heavens on a winged horse child abuse?” At last, Dawkins gives in: “no, it’s not.”

At the end, at about minute 42, Dawkins is asked “Would the world be a better place if religion disappeared tomorrow?”

Dawkins replies, “Ah, yes!”

Well, Hasan gets the last word, saying “goodbye and, dare I say it, God bless.”

Well, Dawkins doesn’t mind getting into a scrap or two. Yesterday, he got into a scrap by tweeting, “all the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.”

And Wikipedia states that his animus against religion is grounded on two beliefs; that religion breeds conflict, and that it encourages or justifies belief without evidence. In the case of pseudoscience—such as whatever they are calling creationism nowadays—being taught as something as valid as science, I’m totally with him. And yes, religion has brought us a bit of conflict, in the past.

And Dawkins argues—the fact that religion may inspire a person to do good is no justification for the existence of God. Ditto for the argument that it feels good to be religious, to have rituals, to meet together as a community.

And am I wrong—from a casual reading of The God Delusion seven years ago—in thinking that Dawkins sees religious belief as a cultural meme, and that it may have developed because, as children, we have an innate instinct to be obedient. That’s useful, in evolutional terms, the offspring that stays closest to the mother has a greater chance of survival than the offspring that explores, wanders, exposes himself to predators or a harsh environment.

“Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” is attributed to the Jesuits, no slouches in the education department. It’s true, in my case. Nobody got to me in the religion business in any serious way, and it’s unlikely now that anybody will.  

OK—that’s Dawkins. What about Hasan?

Well, he’s a Shia, he believes that the path to tread is secular, not Islamist, government, and he has written, “The Iraq war was a strategic disaster – or, as the Tory minister Kenneth Clarke put it in a recent BBC radio discussion, ‘the most disastrous foreign policy decision of my lifetime […] worse than Suez.’”

OK—so far so good. He also condemned the September 11 attacks, and wondered why British Muslims are so passionate about foreign affairs, but relatively uninterested in domestic issues.

Now comes the thorny part; consider this remark in a speech from 2009:

The kuffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Koran; they are described in the Koran as “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Koran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world."[19]

Cattle? Ouch! Nor is the explanation much consolation:

“The Quranic phrase 'people of no intelligence' simply and narrowly refers to the fact that Muslims regard their views on God as the only intellectually tenable position, just as atheists (like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris) regard believers as fundamentally irrational and, even, mentally deficient."[21] The Islamophobia Watch website argued Hasan was the victim of a "witch-hunt", writing that these allegations of extremism were "aimed at getting him dismissed from his job."[22]

As always, I’m split. I have a hard time believing in transubstantiation as a physical reality, and if I really believed that I had the flesh and blood of a Jew two thousand years old, I’d be on the church floor wretching. Can you imagine the taste? And would it have been cooked? And would the priest be offended if I asked for some ketchup with the host?

I’ve also been in the room and at the bedside when my mother died. Was it a spiritual experience?

Certainly it was powerful. It changed my life, as have other experiences not spiritual. I would call it a moment of mystery, a moment when time stopped, the world stopped—for me, at least—and some power or reality beyond anything I knew came into the room, delivered death to a woman who wanted and deserved it, and left us all stunned with wonder.