Islamophobia or not?

 This is the companion piece to my blog to convince people (and in particular Sam Harris) that Islamophobia exists and why it's a problem.  Originally it was part of the same blog, but I decided it was too long and so split it up.  I will discuss specific quotes from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris which I find troublesome. I hope to be constructive, in the sense that I want to persuade you that it is still possible to criticise beliefs we don't like without making statements that are Islamophobic sounding or can feed Islamophobia. I'll start with Dawkins because I think my issues with what he has said are a bit simpler.

Words from Dawkins

Here Dawkins says:

Given that Islam is such an unmitigated evil, and looking at the map supplied by this Christian site, should we be supporting Christian missions in Africa? My answer is still no, but I thought it was worth raising the question. Given that atheism hasn't any chance in Africa for the foreseeable future, could our enemy's enemy be our friend?

  I am not sure how he can seriously describe Islam as an unmitigated evil.  That is a really strong claim thrown up with no evidence, labeling the whole religion and apparently claiming there are no redeeming good features.  Statements like this are ill thought out and entirely unnecessary.  Not to mention the very vague 'supporting' which might well be interpreted in ways you don't like.    Now geopolitics and religion in Africa are complicated topics.  And the interventions of Christian missionaries may well be too.  If there are religious people you disagree who nonetheless are challenging views you find more unpleasant then I am sure there is a lot to consider and it could be discussed carefully.  You could  point out the specific beliefs and practices in, say, some Islamic part of Africa, and compare them to the practices in some Christian part of Africa and possibly discuss a specific form of support you might give one to decrease the practise you don't like. 
Dawkins has also tweeted

Haven't read Koran so couldn't quote chapter & verse like I can for Bible. But often say Islam greatest force for evil today

 and later, in connection to critcism of this.

Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about nazism.

Now I am cringing a little here at commenting on tweets.  The format makes it very difficult to include caveats and make a point carefully in a single tweet and the way tweets can go viral seems like it is perfectly set up to create shit storms over accidental phrasing and language.  This is probably why the media love it so much (it does spread information in interesting ways though).

However these tweets are great examples of how language can be use poorly and so provide good examples I can constructively criticise.  

Dawkins explains the last tweet with:

Simile compares X & Y in one respect, not all. "He runs like a greyhound" doesn't mean you think he's a dog. Is that so hard to understand?

Well clearly not but what feature of Islam is he comparing to Nazism here.  It is not merely that they are both beliefs that have been derived from a particular text.  He could have chosen to say "Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. "You don't have to read Keynes to have an opinion about Keynesianism." except that this doesn't make sense.

 As far as i can tell what Dawkins is saying is that the ugly vile behaviour in Islam is so obvious and transparently grotesque, just as that of the nazis was, that there is no need to read the Koran to know it as such.   I don't see how making comparisons of someones religion to Nazis helps persuade them that specific practices or beliefs they adopted as part of that are bad and should be stopped.

Instead I think what it feeds hatred of muslims.      It is not difficult to point out that he doesn't need to read the Quran to know that some muslims support apostasy of subjugation of women and that they have cited Islam as the reason, without a nazi comparison or an over generalisation.  If you wish to discuss really bad violence done in the name of Islam and compare it to violence that is universally condemned you may do so if you are precise.  You can even say that murdering someone for the "crime" of apostasy is just as vile as murdering someone because of their race.    It is just not necessary to label Islam as a whole (and therefore all believers) and compare the entire religion to Nazism in order to criticise specific ugly things supported by some in it's name.

Another issue are comments like this:

 I would also love it if decent, 'moderate' Muslims would stand up and condemn the barbarisms that are carried out, or threatened, in their name.

OK the context is for this a very sad story about a woman in Iran being sentenced to death by stoning/hanging for adultery.  Dawkins is rightly upset.  I am not sure if he means moderate muslims in Iran (who lack the political freedom to do much)  or outside.  But if he means the former there is a brave campaign by feminists in Iran a to end stoning and for the latter he should probably speak to muslims who work for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.  Anyway I mostly quoted this because it is the collective responsibility attack, which is rather common sadly and is an an inherently bigoted notion.  Why are moderte muslims, who do not support violence or subjugation of women, many of whom just happen to have been born into Islam and maintained that faith, take responsibility for awful things done by other muslims?  Why must they carry this burden of responsibility when, for example, I do not? 



   Then there is his (qualified) support of Geert Wilders.

Geert Wilders, if it should turn out that you are a racist or a gratuitous stirrer and provocateur I withdraw my respect, but on the strength of Fitna alone I salute you as a man of courage, who has the balls to stand up to a monstrous enemy.

The thing is he's talking about this video. [Warning: it's vile] That video begins and ends with a picture of Mohammed with a bomb on his head and a fuse burning down.  It shows a whole bunch of horrible acts perpetrated by muslims and terrible statements made by muslims.  Then it shows how muslim numbers in Netherlands and europe have grown since 1900 (oh noes we're swamped I tell you)  and at ~11.40 it has a paranoid ' the future of the netherlands?' set of scenes where islamists have taken over (presumably the pictures are from real atrocities by muslims elsewhere).  Then it sums up the message at around 14.20 with 
 

"Islam wants to rule, submit and seeks to destroy our western civilization.
In 1945, Nazism was defeated in Europe.
In 1989, Communism was defeated in Europe.
Now, the islamic ideology has to be defeated.
Stop Islamisation.
Defend our freedom"

and then back to the Muhammed timebomb.

The obvious message is that islam is a ticking timebomb in europe and if we don't do something to stop it (muslim immigration I believe) then we will be taken over and run have to live under islam with female subjugation and murder of gay men, stoning for adultery etc.  I really find it appalling that dawkins would support scaremongering like that, by an anti-immigration nut case.

I'm struggling to be constructive about this one.  Geert Wilders is pushing a specifically Islamophobic message here and trying to manipulate emotions against muslims.   Pointing to things like this does not help further reasoned criticism of bad practices and beliefs.   I assume Dawkins misunderstood the video and I would simply ask him to watch it again and also read more about Geert Wilders.  

  Overall I cannot believe that Dawkins has bad intentions here.  I think he is so used to getting unreasonable flak from some religious people who simply can't take criticism that sometimes he loses perspective and judgement on stuff like Fitna.  I do not think he wants to see muslims discriminated against or harmed or stop immigration.  With Harris I am a lot less clear and that is why I think his points are more difficult to comment on.

Words from Sam Harris

  I worry about how much he talks about violence and the general tone of certain passages in the End of Faith and some articles he has written  and I am also disturbed by his denial of Islamophobia.  In general I would like it if he would explicitly acknowledge that hate groups which target people specifically because of their religious beliefs (rather than race) exist and the problem they cause for ordinary muslims.  I would like him to criticise these groups and explain clearly to sympathisers how his views are different from those of groups like the EDL. In the US there is the Stop Islamisation of America group (who I haven't discussed because I don't know much more about them than what is on wiki) who seem Islamophobic, though their activities don't seem as physical as those of the EDL.  I am sure there are others.

Harris has been strongly criticised for writing this in 2006

Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren’t. The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

    He has written about this in his response to criticism

The whole purpose of that essay (written in 2006) was to express my concern that the political correctness of the Left has made it taboo to even notice the menace of political Islam, leaving only right-wing fanatics to do the job. Such fanatics are, as I thought I made clear, the wrong people to do this, being nearly as bad as jihadists themselves. I was not praising fascists: I was arguing that liberal confusion and cowardice was empowering them.
Perhaps the point is still not clear (can one ever be sure?). So, imagine: A copy of the Koran gets burned tomorrow—or is merely rumored to have been burned. What will happen if this act of desecration is widely publicized? Well, we can be sure that Muslims by the thousands, or even the tens of thousands, will riot—perhaps in a dozen countries. Scores of people may die as a result. Who can be counted upon to defend free speech in the face of this pious madness? Will the editorial page of The New York Times remind the world that free people should be free to burn the Koran, or any other book, without fear of being murdered? Probably not. But the secular Left will surely denounce the bigot who burned the book for his “religious insensitivity” and hold him largely (if not entirely) responsible for the resulting mayhem and loss of life. It will be left to crackpot pastors, white supremacists, and other jingoists on the far Right—and, of course, “Islamophobes” like me—to remind us that the First Amendment exists, that books don’t feel pain, and that the sensitivities of every other faith are regularly traduced without similar uprisings.

He is objecting to liberals being so soft on the "threat of Islam" that he thinks fascist are the ones who speak more sensibly than them (or, if we take the 'most' literally, anyone). I got that from the first article though saying 'most' makes it particularly difficult to defend.    There are a wide range of views on Islam amongst liberals and I'm sure some liberals are far too lax on Islam and slip into some apologist bracket but many are not and when Sam Harris paints liberals as weak and fascists as making the most sense on "the threat of Islam" (despite hating their racism generally), he is handing free gift to the fascist, one they do not deserve. There are plenty of liberals who do not agree with Harris or fascists but are still critics of the subjugation of women and anti-gay attitudes which are quite prevalent in Islam.

In his Koran burning and riot speculation above, I think he describes a skewed vision of what would happen.  If this happens our tv news and front covers of our papers will be flooded with images of angry muslims rioting. The airwaves will be filled with commentators condemning them, in both reasonable and unreasonable terms.  Right wing shock jocks will have a field day, but it will not be only them and Fox news.  It will be condemned on CNN, ABC NBC and yes the New York Times and the Washington Post.   In the weeks after there will be many follow up stories about the dangers of Islam and the origin of extremism.

What might happen in addition to all this is that, if the riot doesn't occur immediately after the incident, there might be an editorial or two pointing out that the burning of the Koran is an attempt to stir up violence and a bit of a dickish thing to do.  Given that it will result in a riot this may be a rather sensible point.

  I am sure there will be plenty of editorials from more right wing (but not fascist) publications warning that it will happen and blaming Islam.  There may even be some publications that want to stir the pot further by posting pictures of the Mohammed or encouraging people to burn a Quran in solidarity.  To believe the rioting muslims won't be criticised by anyone but "crackpot pastors, white supremacists, and other jingoists on the far Right" and people like Harris who get called Islamophobes, shows a massively distorted perspective. 

Sam Harris may think liberals are apologists for Islam but he should consider the possibility that it is his views that have wandered into paranoia concerning the threat of Islam, making absurd right wing nonsense seem reasonable to him.
The kind of paranoia from the extreme right  in the wake of 9/11 was staggering and include suggestions that muslims living in America were turning into an Islamic state, that Islam will take take over Europe and America or indeed "the end of the world as we in the West" know it."  I am really not sure how soft liberals would have to be to make this kind of view more sensible than theirs.  

Perhaps I shouldn't believe he's serious about the comparison  at all and is just criticising liberals.  But the problem is exaggerated rhetoric, intended or not feeds people who believe we are in the middle of the Islamisation of Europe and America.

Sam Harris also gets criticsed for talking about preemptive nuclear strikes. 

It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side.

Sam Harris puts this in context because it has been misconstrued as advocating preemptive strikes generally.  He isn't, I can see that, he is talking about a special hypothetical situation  where an " Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry ".  His notions are still disturbing.

   An Islamist regime getting nuclear weapons is not sufficient to merit a preemptive nuclear strike.   To put this in context the regime in North Korea is deeply disturbing and erratic but it would be insane to propose preemptive strikes on them just now , despite the recent threat to the US (even with better capabilities so they could actually hit her).   Iran may acquire them but it would be insane to consider a preemptive nuclear strike.  Were the Taliban (or even Al Quaida) to get control of Pakistan it would still be murderously insane, based on that alone, to consider a preemptive nuclear strike.  Just because they favour using terrorist attacks to affect change (and they do have specific aims they are not just out to murder westeners) does not mean they will simply fire off nuclear weapons when they get them.

Secondly there is his notion that this would then trigger a series of responses that "much of the world’s population could be annihilated".  This is a crazy end of the world fantasy that reeks of the paranoia we hear from extremist nutcases, but current geopolitics would have to change dramatically for there to be the kind of annihilating response from other muslim nations.  Currently terrorism from various unpleasant groups like Al Quaida have tragically killed many innocent lives and in Islamic countries many muslim people are massively socially oppressed due to religious conservatism but Islamic are no where near powerful to actually pose a serious threat to western and have little chance of them being effective offensively in a war against rich western countries.   The truth is western interventions in Afganistan and Iraq have killed far far more people than terrorism has or is likely to. 


Think about the impact of this. He has suggested a horrific scenario created by muslims, discussed an unreasonable response and then drawn frightening hyperbolic conclusion that a significant chunk of us are killed as a result (and if you believe that's likely,  go back and reconsider whats sufficient for a the preemptive strike).  And all of this in the context of a time when we are involved in several interventionist wars in muslim countries, interventionist wars he discusses in the same book.  Not to mention that this was written not long after a terrorist attack that killed thousands which has already made people frightened enough.

Such discussions (intended or otherwise) feed into paranoia about radical islam and beliefs that we need excessively violent response, if you've just considered dropping a nuclear weapon on them and thought about a large chunk of the western population wiped out, dropping a few bombs on some children in bagdad doesn't seems so horrifying does it?

In 2004 he wrote:

Unless the world’s Muslims can find some way of expunging the metaphysics that is fast turning their religion into a cult of death, we will ultimately face the same perversely destructive behavior throughout much of the world. 

Wherever these events occur, we will find Muslims tending to side with other Muslims, no matter how sociopathic their behavior. 

It is time we admitted that we are not at war with “terrorism.” We are at war with Islam. This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims, but we are absolutely at war with the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran. The only reason Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to us is because the fundamentals of Islam are a threat to us. Every American should read the Koran and discover the relentlessness with which non-Muslims are vilified in its pages. The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a dangerous fantasy — and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge.

 I am glad he immediately clarifies that he doesn't mean we are at war with all muslims after saying "We are at war with Islam."  But this is still ugly stuff.
 When you describe yourself as being at war with an idea (and I see no suggestion he does not mean an actual physical war) you are setting up a losing proposition.  Clearly Harris means they are at war with us rather than suggesting we start one (though note he is discussing this in the context of a war the UK and US had started in Iraq).  But it is the terrorists who want to frame this as a war on Islam so that all muslims feel threatened and are pulled into it. 

In addition the world is a complicated place and you do public understand no good when you simply all issues with terrorism to a "war on Islam".

I also disagree with his view

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.
Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.

 I'm sorry but the only people who hold the moral high ground (if such a thing exists) in that depressing situation are those calling for peace and negotiation.  That would incidentally be some Israelis and some Palestinians.  I also cannot agree with his call for profiling at airports or his interpretation of what message a mosque near the World Trade Center site sends

The erection of a mosque upon the ashes of this atrocity will also be viewed by many millions of Muslims as a victory—and as a sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with decadence and cowardice.

I'm failing in my attempt to be constructive here and it's all got a bit finger pointy again, sorry.  On these positions I just disagree fundamentally with what he is trying to say and find it abhorrent. 

So while I know people who generally seem reasoned and balanced who like Sam Harris I am finding it hard to see why.  I think he paints a violent picture of a world seriously close to the brink of collapse.  A picture that is not remotely borne out by reality and a correct understanding of geopolitcs.  And he paints this pending doom as being almost entirely a result of Islam.

Sam Harris: I am sorry if my reading of you is wrong but this is not the result of seeing a few phrases here and there.  I have made a genuine attempt to read your articles and listen to things you say and this is the impression I have formed.  I have tried to explain why with these references and quotes, but there is a lot more that I have seen that I don't like.

 If I am wrong perhaps you could consider that this might have been helped by the language you use.  If you want to change my mind you could start by acknowledging that anti-muslim hate groups exist , who target people because of their belief. You could explain clearly that you are aware that people get discriminated against and attacked purely because they are muslims and that this is wrong.  You could acknowledge that there are people on the right who say absurd and ridiculous things about muslims and the threat they pose and that the things they say are bigoted and awful.

Sorry Sam Harris, but Islamophobia is real and dangrous.

So there have been a lot of accusations of Islamophobia against prominant rationalists  and a defence by Sam Haris that appears to deny that Islamophobia exists.   I disgree with this and dislike some of the particular ways Sam Harris and others have criticised Islam, feeling they at least feed into Islomophobia if they are not in fact reflective of it.  However I don't want this just to be another finger pointing piece on this, I want to be constructive. I want to explain what Islamophobioa is, why it's a problem and how I think you can criticise Islam without unnecessarily feeding this problem.

Before I discuss that let me clarify my opinions on Islam so that I am not misrepresented. I am an atheist and I find belief in god a bit silly.  I have previously complained about criticisms of religion which suggest that it is somehow inconsistent with or ruled out by science.  But that doesn't mean I think belief in any particular religion is sensible a priori, I find them odd and I'm happy to say that to friends who are religious. 

It is fine to criticise beliefs, I do it a lot. It's also perfectly OK to point out things you don't like in religious scripture, or that are promoted or carried out in the name of a particular religion and discuss how certain beliefs may have influenced people to do violent things.   There is nothing wrong with discussing the relative merits or problems between religions, you don't have to regard them all equally.  It is great to challenge people spouting homophobic bile or promoting the subjugation of women.

I have done all of these things. You should not spread fear, paranoia and hate about a whole group of people (however you group them) or use language that can be understood as smearing an entire group for the actions or the beliefs of a smaller group.  Different criticisms have different ranges of validity.  "They believe in a god without evidence" I think applies to any religion with a god, since that is a universal belief in those religions and there is no evidence to support that belief.   "They blow people up" is a criticism of a tiny minority of people in  a religion and if you want to link the behaviour to the religion you really should present some supporting evidence.  It is not per se bigoted to think religion plays a role, but if it is not supported by evidence then it may look that way. and if you make careless blanket generalisations about a religion and violence you risk smearing everyone who identifies with that religion.

Islamophobia exists

Here I want to explain what Islamophobia is and show that it exists.  Islamophobia is an irrational fear or hatred of muslims, which can manifest itself in anti-muslim biogotry and discrimination based on being muslim.

The British National Party (BNP), the main racist party in Britain,  have focused a lot on muslims lately exploiting a new space in public sentiment created by 9/11 and the discussion of Islamic terrorism.  At the last election they made specific calls to end "muslim immigration"  to Britain.    They have made claims about paedophilia within Islam using horrible slogans like "our children are not halal meat" [Warning: thats a link to the BNP's own site] and their leader has called Islam a cancer in Europe.

Unlike the BNP the the English Defense League are explicitly against Islam rather than various racial groups.  Their mission statement [Warning: thats a link to the EDL's own site] makes it clear that their concern is Islam and phrases it in terms of human rights.  It almost sounds reasonable.  However just glance around on their website and you will find videos propagating myths about muslims on benefits and associating them all with jihadist terrorists and unpleasant rants by Pat Condell (more on him later).  They have involved themselves in violent clashes.   Their supporters have cried chants of "we hate muslims"  and "you dirty fucking muslims" at rallies.


Now while the EDL are a clear archetypal model of an Islamophobic hate group, worryingly these attitudes seem to be more mainstream rather than just confined to thuggish bigots.  Matthew Goodwin has spoken elloquently about the problem of the EDL  and Islamophobia:

"The reason why the EDL's adoption of Islamophobia is particularly significant is that unlike the 1970s, when the National Front was embracing antisemitism, there are now sections of the media and the British establishment that are relatively sympathetic towards Islamophobia," says Goodwin. "It is not difficult to look through the media and find quite hostile views towards Islam and Muslims. That is fundamentally different to the 1970s, when very few newspapers or politicians were endorsing the NF's antisemitic message.

"The point for your average voter is that if they see the EDL marching through their streets shouting about how the neighbourhood is about to be swamped by Muslims or how the UK is going to be Islamified by 2040, they are also receiving these cues from other sections of British society … the message of the EDL may well be legitimised if that continues."

Indeed the daily mail regularly paints a picture of muslims as violent extremists and has ridiculous headlines like "Will britain one day be muslim?" and stories about muslim converts suggesting accompanied with reports of unatributed  hysterical "claims that the country is undergoing a process of ‘Islamification’."

But while many know the daily mail as a hate peddling rag that swims in the filth  of bigotry all on many different issues (the only time they want to support gay rights is when it involves attacking Islam) they are not alone in this. There is a continuous spectrum between outright islamophobic bigotry and respectable, sober criticism of Islamic beliefs and practices.  Those who make some genuine and fair criticisms of Islam can, if they stray into bigotry and misrepresentations, give bigotry the veneer of respectability.

For example Pat Condell is a comedian and critic of religion who has a low brow but powerful, punctuated style of rhetoric that he delivers via youtube sermons.  It is clear he doesn't like religion much in general and describes it in quite unpleasant and unflattering terms.  He is over the top generally but  distinctly harsher on Islam, and has gone as far as to misrepresent rape statistics in Oslo so that he can paint Islam as creating some kind of rape crisis that needs to be stopped.  He has also done this with Sweden, by simply pointing to a correlation between muslim immigration and a large increase in rape and completely ignoring changes in the definition of rape in the statistics and a wealth of confounding factors amongst other problems.  

 He describes an area of London, Borough of Tower Hamlets with an unusually high population of muslims (about 35%) as having been "taken over by muslims".  Another bad habit he has is making many fatuous claims about certain views or behaviour (women covering their faces) as demonstrating mental illness, which I have a problem with more from a mental health awareness point of view than anything to do with Islamophobia.

  In my opinion his bigoted hate of Islam and muslims blinds him to any true evaluation of evidence and he simply leaps on any information that paints muslims in as unpleasant a light as possible then regurgitates this on his videos. Unfortunately he has fairly mainstream appeal and I am ashamed to say I have friends who have posted videos by him on facebook.   I have no reason to believe that Pat Condell likes or supports the BNP or EDL. Indeed he explicitly states he does not support the BNP, (though he is a UKIP voter who are also fairly unpleasant and xenophobic).  Nonetheless he is very popular with the EDL and they are certainly fans of his rhetoric as my clicking on the videos section on their site showed.  This is why when criticising beliefs or practices within Islam or by muslims you should not use Islamophobic sounding language which could be misconstrued as applying to all muslims nor paint an exaggerated paranoid picture of the threat of Islam as you can feed hate groups their propaganda.

Islamophobia accusations and denial

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are substantially more considered and intelligent than Pat Condell.  Nonetheless they have been criticised recently in several articles with varying quality.  There is this, focussed mostly on Sam Harris.   It makes some absurd comparison to scientific racism, by which he means stuff like phrenology (a pseudoscience), used to argue for racial differences.  This is daft and there's no connection whatsoever.  However the quotes he uses to criticise Harris though are interesting and I will discuss some I think are problematic later, though the way they are used has varying degrees of validity, please see this defense for an alternative perspective. 
Greenwald made a better job of criticising Sam Harris though I do still find things I disagree with.  There is also a salon article which focuses more on Dawkins. This also has a lot of journalistic fluff and rhetoric, but again the article links to some stuff which is concerning.  Before Greenwald's piece was written he exchanged emails with Sam Harris, who documents them here.  My title comes from this since Sam Harris suggests that Islamophobia doesn't even exists:

"Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas—like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male “honor” that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls—you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims—especially women and girls.

There is no such thing as “Islamophobia.” This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia. And it is doing its job, because people like you have been taken in by it. "

 Following Greenwald's article Harris has also written another piece responding to the criticisms.  His argument is long and hard to condense, and in addition since there are many accusations of quote mining and misrepresentation (with varying degrees of justification), I'll quote it at length.

As I wrote in my personal exchange with Greenwald, “Islamophobia” is a term of propaganda. Here is how he responded to me on the Guardian website:

Perhaps the most repellent claim Harris made to me was that Islamophobia is fictitious and non-existent, “a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia”. How anyone can observe post-9/11 political discourse in the west and believe this is truly mystifying. The meaning of “Islamophobia” is every bit as clear as “anti-semitism” or “racism” or “sexism” and all sorts of familiar, related concepts. It signifies (1) irrational condemnations of all members of a group or the group itself based on the bad acts of specific individuals in that group; (2) a disproportionate fixation on that group for sins committed at least to an equal extent by many other groups, especially one’s own; and/or (3) sweeping claims about the members of that group unjustified by their actual individual acts and beliefs.

 This is extremely useful, being both clearly stated and clearly wrong. The meaning of “Islamophobia” is not at all like the meanings of those other terms. It is simply not easy to differentiate prejudice against Muslims from ordinary racism and xenophobia directed at Arabs, Pakistanis, Somalis, and other people who happen to be Muslim. Of course, there is no question that such bigotry exists, and it is as odious as Greenwald believes. But inventing a new term does not give us license to say that there is a new form of hatred in the world. How does the term “anti-Semitism” differ? Well, we have a 2000-year-old tradition of religiously inspired hatred against Jews, conceived as a distinct race of people, both by those who hate them and by Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism is, therefore, a specific form of racism that, as everyone knows, has taken many terrible turns over the years (and is now especially prevalent among Muslims, for reasons that can be explicitly traced not merely to recent conflicts over land in the Middle East, but to the doctrine of Islam). “Sexism,” generally speaking, is a bias against women, not because of any doctrines they might espouse, but because they were born without a Y chromosome. The meanings of these terms are clear, and each names a form of hatred and exclusion directed at people, as people, not because of their behavior or beliefs, but because of the mere circumstances of their birth.

Islamophobia is something else entirely. It is, Greenwald tells us in his three points, an “irrational” and “disproportionate” and “unjustified” focus on Muslims. But the only way that Muslims can reasonably be said to exist as a group is in terms of their adherence to the doctrine of Islam. There is no race of Muslims. They are not united by any physical traits or a diaspora. Unlike Judaism, Islam is a vast, missionary faith. The only thing that defines the class of All Muslims—and the only thing that could make this group the possible target of anyone’s “irrational” fear, “disproportionate” focus, or “unjustified” criticism—is their adherence to a set of beliefs and the behaviors that these beliefs inspire.

Actually the difference between criticising a race of people and criticising beliefs is really not as clear as Harris suggests.  Many people are born into religions and few people change the religion, so how much of a free choice is it really?
At the same time religions are generally broad churches with many different interpretations, so when you criticise a religion as a whole for beliefs or practices which are not universal you are in effect smearing those who do not share the beliefs you base your criticism on.  And bigotry is bigotry regardless of whether you base it on a person's race, job, taste in music or belief.   It doesn't matter if the criticism is based on something they choose and can change, if you decide treat them differently in situations where this is not a factor you are a bigot.  Refusing to hire someone as a bus driver because they listen to classical music in their spare time or refusing someone admission to the theatre because they work as a car mechanic is still discrimination.

And, unlike a person’s racial characteristics or gender, beliefs can be argued for, tested, criticized, and changed. In fact, wherever the norms of rational conversation are allowed to do their work, beliefs must earn respect. More important, beliefs are claims about reality and about how human beings should live within it—so they necessarily lead to behavior, and to values, laws, and public institutions that affect the lives of all people, whether they share these beliefs or not. Beliefs end marriages and start wars.

Yes  indeed they can and you can criticise the specific people who hold those beliefs when relevant.  But this is not a justification to make any blanket statements you want about a religion, discriminate against them and certainly not to chant abuse about such a group.  That is still bigotry.  The EDL are still a bunch of Islamophobic twats.

So “Islamophobia” must be—it really can only be—an irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified fear of certain people, regardless of their ethnicity or any other accidental trait, because of what they believe and to the degree to which they believe it. Thus the relevant question to ask is whether a special concern about people who are deeply committed to the actual doctrines of Islam, in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, is irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified.

Actually no that is not the question.  The question was does Islamophobia exist, not are there legitimate concerns which can be discussed without being Islamophobic.  And more generally although I disagreed with a lot of things in the critical articles linked earlier, I don't believe any claimed that Islam could not be criticised.

Contrary to Greenwald’s assertion, my condemnation of Islam does not apply to “all members of a group or the group itself based on the bad acts of specific individuals in that group.”

Sam Harris may consider this to be the case for his criticisms, but it is not true of all criticsims.  The EDL and the BNP want people to strir up hate against all muslims.  Islamophobia does exists.

My condemnation applies to the doctrines of Islam and to the ways in which they reliably produce these “bad acts.” Unfortunately, in the case of Islam, the bad acts of the worst individuals—the jihadists, the murderers of apostates, and the men who treat their wives and daughters like chattel—are the best examples of the doctrine in practice.

Regardless of what your reading and interpretation of the Quran and hadith is, Islam is practised in different ways.  The religion is not necessarily understood by the definition of the texts (or indeed your interpretation of them).  Since many people call themselves muslims, followers of Islam, without mimicking or supporting the behaviour of these worst individuals, if you describe Islam only in terms of the worst indivuals, without clarification, you are smearing those people.

Those who adhere most strictly to the actual teachings of Islam, those who expound its timeless dogma most honestly, are precisely the people whom Greenwald and other obscurantists want us to believe least represent the faith.

 

Well, this is a very easy difference of opinion to resolve: One need only study the doctrine of Islam—not merely as it existed in the 7th century, but as it exists today—and ask some very basic questions. What, for instance, is the penalty for apostasy? Interestingly, it isn’t spelled out in the Koran—there, apostates are merely promised their just deserts in hell—but it is made painfully clear in the hadith, and in the opinions of Muslim jurists and Muslim mobs everywhere. The year is 2013, and the penalty for apostasy, everywhere under Islam, is death. I have yet to meet an apologist for the religion, however evasive, who could lie about this fact with a straight face. (Perhaps Greenwald would like to be the first.) Needless to say, I receive emails from former Muslims who are all too aware of what it means to be a former Muslim. Depending on where they live, these people run a real risk of being murdered, perhaps even by members of their own families, for having lost their faith. 

I am not an Islamic scholar, I have not read the Quran (though I did just find a few copies and will try at some point) or the hadiths therefore I cannot argue to what extent Islam teaches the subjugation of women, death for apostasy or  violence against non-believers (though forgive me if I don't immediately accept Harris's reading but also listen to muslims on this).   Religion is rarely practised in precisely the way doctrinal texts dictate and there are many muslims whose lifestyle and views do not reflect this.  Even if the description by Harris is  accurate some may use the text for reflection and guidance rather than using it explicitly as an instruction manual.

 However let us be clear anyone who believes in the subjugation of women, death for apostasy or  violence against non-believers is an arsehole and if that is the message of their religion, their religion is a nasty shit. On apostasy I did have a look at wiki, which claims (based on a single source I can't check) death penalty is the consensus view of what punishment is prescribed under sharia law.  That is horrifying if true.  Thankfully there is opposition to this view and I hope that this opposition becomes the dominant strand of thought.  Muslims who do support death for apostasy deserve condemnation, this belief is grotesque and they horrify me by holding it.   I also note the wiki lists the punishment in various countries which is very disturbing (and sad). 

As appalling as all this is, it does not justify hate groups chanting "dirty fucking muslims"; it does not justify discrimination against people because they are muslim; it does not justify refusing asylum to people because they are muslim and it does not justify violence directed against muslims.  Islamophobia still exists and it is still a big problem.  Also note punishments for apostasy is a specific example of discrimination against someone for their beliefs rather than race etc, though it doesn't have a narrow target of a single group so we reference it by the perpertartors rather than victims.  But it is similar in nature to the murderous intent of someone like Anders Breivik towards muslims because of their beliefs, which is an example of Islamophobia.  Tragically Anders Islamophobia led to him murdering many people, though they actually happened to be non-muslims, which only shows that tackling Islamophobia is important for the safety of everyone.

Sam Harris then discusses whether he needs to crticise Islam equally to other religions.  I won't quote this part because I simply agree, and don't think anyone suggested  otherwise.   I suspect Harris thinks that is what is suggested when they spoke of undue focus.  I think they mean focus which is not merited.

As far as I can tell Sam Harris has not withdrawn, but rather tried to justify his horrible Islamopobia denial.  Why does this matter?  Well if we are to criticise unpleasant parts of beliefs that exist within Islam, and I think this is a good thing to do, then we also don't want to stir up Islamophobia at the same time.   We do not want to unnecessarily encourage the EDL in the way Pat Condell clearly does, with his daft rape claims.  Also to actually be a good thing it has to be effective at changing those views, if you argue the good cause in such a away that you actually make opinions go in the opposite direction you do harm.  Given that the most unpleasant things done in the name of Islam occur in countries in Asia and Africa, where the religion is more powreful and there is less freedom and democracy it is not straightforward that criticising it from outside always actually helps.   Care should be taken there too.

 I wanted to discuss what Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have said here next, but now I have moved it to a companion piece. The aim (though not necessarily fully achieved) is to be constructive.  I want to persuade you that it is still possible to criticise beliefs we don't like without making statements that are Islamophobic sounding or can feed Islamophobia.  I don't discuss Christopher Hitchens because I know his writing less.

Conclusions

Although not from a muslim background myself I went to a school with a large muslim intake (something like 20-30% I think). I have friends who are muslims and have watched people struggle with both sides of this issue.  I have friends who had conservative and oppressive social values pushed on them and I have friends who have been attacked by Islamophic twats.  I am concerned that there are people with generally decent liberal values who are in effect providing a veneer of respectability for hate groups and politicians with an exclusionary Islamophobic agenda.


I have no doubt that there are people who accuse Dawkins, Hitchins and Harris of Islamophobia purely to deflect criticism of their religion. But Islamophobia is real and some things they say feed it, while it is possible to criticize Islam in more careful ways that don't. What's the harm in saying "there are very unpleasant things in my reading of the Qu'ran and I see these carried out and worse things still in the name of Islam" while acknowledging that many Muslims are peaceful and that Muslims still only hold a tiny minority of power in western countries. Instead of providing slogans like "Islam is an unmitigated evil"?.


With this post I am trying to show the imposition of oppressive social values and worse can be challenged without feeding the Islamophobes.  This is not a call for an end to criticism it is a call for greater consideration, clarity and care.

My drugs rant

It's well past time I wrote about this, given the title of my blog and the fact that support for the legalisation of drugs is probably the earliest political stance I adopted - I've held this view since I was a very young child, though it has evolved a lot since then and there have been times I doubted it. In part this is the reason I haven't written about it thus far, I've gotten bored by the arguments and having failed to find any significant flaw in the argument in many years of presenting it to people who disagree (and in some cases changing their minds) I am sceptical about what I will learn by doing this. But regardless here it is..


There is a short "cliffs notes" version of this here.

First this is not an argument to legalise all chemical substances and have no regulatory framework for anything. By "drugs" I only refer t0 well known substances which are used recreationally and by legalise I mean bring into a carefully regulated framework. Also really we should assess each drug individually but that would take too long. So be aware it is possible there are exceptions for each argument and while I'm not aware of a popular recreational drug for which the balance isn't tilted in terms of legalisation this doesn't preclude that possibility nor that such drugs couldn't in principle appear.

OK a libertarian principle which I ~ subscribe to is that you shouldn't make laws restricting consenting decisions between adults. I don't think that many people believe in this principle in it's entirety, at least not when they've thought through all of the consequences, but I suspect most think that it is a reasonable default and if you are breaking that principle then you should have some pretty powerful reasoning or evidence.

So why might people do this? One possibility is absolute moral values. If you fundamentally believe drug use is immoral (without reference to social or personal harm we can study) and think they deserve to suffer then I doubt I will persuade you otherwise. Based on those values the drug laws makes sense, though I do think your values are rather disgusting. However presumably everyone else is interested in the pragmatic results of this legislation and on that we can have a discussion. If drug prohibition leads to more deaths than under a regulated framework would you still support it? For this we will need to look at the evidence. Here I will outline the argument about how to use the the evidence and will at points give you my impression of what the evidence states. However I deliberately avoid quoting statistics and making many references to science papers because I am not an expert with the fairest overview and I want YOU to investigate yourself.

So some people are simply concerned with protecting vulnerable people from their own bad choices. Most recreational drugs have some health risks/dangers, as do many other activities people choose to do for pleasure (e.g. football, boxing, drinking, mountaineering, sex). If this the case we need to establish the extent of those risks and consider what is an acceptable reasonable choice. I am not a medical expert and will not get into details, especially since this is a general discussion but in general the health risks are far lower than is suggested by the tabloid press. It is my understand that the health risks of drugs like ecstasy, cannabis*, speed and even non infrequent use of powdered cocaine** are not usually considered to be significantly worse than those of alcohol and tobacco. Other drugs have more severe health implications associated with use, heroin users suffer high rates of overdoses and HIV infection for example. Remember each drug has different qualitative risks though (how do you compare the long term risk of cancer, with that of an allergic reaction leading to instant death or a risk of liver failure or infertility? and so on) so they cannot be compared directly, you need to examine each risk (by consulting experts or reading public communications by them) and consider how you personally weigh each of them.

Now it's possible that for you even with a realistic estimate of the health risks you still believe some or many drugs are too dangerous for their use to be a legitimate recreational activity and anyone who disagrees and wants to use them must be protected from themselves. But there are other considerations. You must also consider how much more dangerous the drugs are when sold in an illegal market under drug prohibition. Dangers associated with adulteration/contamination of the drugs, unsafe practices due to secretive use (e.g. needle sharing, makeshift pipes), increased risk of overdose due to unstable supply and unreliable purity levels are all a direct result of the drug laws. To be quantitative you need again to look at each drug and each risk individually, but I suggest that this increased risk is a very substantial, often overpowering the moderate risk of the drug itself. On top of this there is now the risk of arrest and incarceration created by the laws, which we need to also consider. Ruining someones life by throwing them in jail for several years to "protect them" from their decision to take a mild risk of getting tuberculosis does not seem very caring. Punitive responses to drug use can only be justified if the deterrent effect really works, i.e. substantially less people submit themselves to these risks you deem too great to tolerate. If we could reduce drug use to zero it wouldn't matter that they are much more dangerous when purchased in an illegal market. However that is spectacularly unrealistic.

So now we need to consider what impact if any drug laws have on usage. Let me delay that for a bit though because it will also be important in the other concern which may lead people to support drug laws.

Namely the wider social harm. So while the transaction for drugs and the use of them appears to only involve the user and his supplier, there may be others who are affected. Syringes lying in the street, "dangerous drug mad" people wandering the streets, theft to support their habit.

Is this reasonable? Well first certainly not all drugs have much wider effects. There is no wider social impact from a drug like ecstasy. It is not addictive, and therefore does not induce theft to pay for it, people who use it do not get typically get violent, it is swallowed in pill form, not injected so no needles lying around.

As for violence it may seem reasonable to believe that some drugs, e.g. cocaine can stimulate aggression and violent acts in the right circumstance due to their elevated mood, with the opposite effect from e.g. cannabis. However to make a case justifying drug prohibition we need evidence first that significant numbers of violent acts can be causally attributed to cocaine and an explanation of why deal with this and not alcohol which is associated with far more violence . While the first two points appear not to be satisfied, and thus sufficient to dismiss this argument for now, the latter is devastating. Alcohol leads to an enormous volume of violent incidents and health problems. Scientific drug experts have weighed up the overall harm (using subjective weightings for individual risk) of these drugs and classified them, finding alcohol to be the worst by far and this has been widely reported.

Although it is good that this has been reported in the media I find it disappointing that they have ignored the fact that there have been subjective choices made in combining qualitatively different social harms (e.g. injuries from drunken assault against used needles in parks or deaths from drunk drivers) . It should also be stated more strongly that this is the net harm from current use levels, not harm per user nor harm per single dose. Alcohol does so badly because it is used so widely, if we considered harm per user heroin, crack and crystal meth would dominate. Nonetheless the findings are still useful to consider, but it is really more important to look at the individual risk factors for yourself and in particular which might be solved by a reduction in users and which are a product of the drug laws themselves


As with health risks the wider social damage caused by the drug laws themselves is enormous. With violent gangs in charge of trafficking and supplying drugs to addicts and drug addicts committing crimes to support their habit, the relatively small number of drug addicts and criminals involved in supply have a disproportionately large impact on the rest of society. You can check the figures for yourself , the numbers are very very large and shocking.

It is indisputable that the effect per user must be greater under prohibition than under a regulated legal framework, and I am suggesting (but check for yourself) that in fact the harm per user which comes from the drug laws themselves is many times higher than any the harm from the drugs alone. So to support the illegality of drug use as a protection one must assume that the number of actual drug users is dramatically cut by the laws. I am aware of no evidence to support this.


One can use Portugal, Switzerland and Netherlands as well as the past history of the UK and US to get a feel for what happens when we change laws on certain drugs in liberal democracies. There is little there to give one the impression that things get worse when you liberalise. In fact to the contrary looking at countries where addictive drug use has been decriminalised (Portugal) or medical subscriptions provided for addicts (Switzerland) the uptake of these drugs has fallen. This result is anticipated by an understanding that since addicts cannot break their addiction when it is clearly in their own interest making it illegal will not stop them either. Instead their demand fuels an illegal market with high reward for the creation of new addicts as well as the supply of existing ones. The situation is not much better for soft drugs with evidence of only a small increase in uptake if any.

Of course these are real world cases and have all the problems in identifying actual factors behind any change, but given the huge and undisputed problems with contamination, criminal gangs and crime to pay the inflated prices created with drug prohibition, one has to maintain a rather strong prior belief that the number of addicts will massively shoot up to maintain a belief that harm is worse without prohibition.

I find it impossible to take seriously any politician claiming to advocate continued prohibition to save lives. This is simply not supported by the evidence, which suggests the reverse that the drug laws cost many lives and ruin far more. In my opinion there is no credible case for drug laws.

If you are a voter I suggest it is your duty to consider this issue. Consider these arguments and investigate the evidence. I am not not a medical expert and may be wrong or misinformed, but I recommend you find out what experts say on each empirical point raised here, and judge for yourself.

I really think you have to be either uniformed or hold a fairly extreme moral view to not come to the conclusion that we should legalise and regulate addictive drugs. People are dying while many voters remain ignorant of the issue, please help change this by informing yourself and possibly others.


*People may worry about cannabis because the media has put out a number of scare stories that it causes mental health issues. I am not a medical expert and therefore one should not rely on anything I say in this regard, but it is my understanding of the situation is that there is a link, known about for quite some time, between the cannabis and psychotic symptoms severe enough to lead to a schizophrenia diagnosis, and some evidence suggesting cannabis use predates onset of these symptoms (this ruled out the self medication hypothesis). This does not demonstrate a causal link as there may be a common cause, it is difficult to be sure that the people diagnosed with schizophrenia were not instead suffering from temporary drug induced psychosis and finally even if these studies are correct the incidence level is still very small and most people suffering from schizophrenia do not pose a serious risk to others. Note: I AM NOT AN EXPERT. PLEASE DO NOT RELY ON ME FOR INFORMATION ON HEALTH RISKS.



**Cocaine is addictive in the sense that users exhibit signs of dependency and distress when they try to break habitual usage though they does not appear to be the same physical withdrawal issues associated with opiates. Patters of of addiction may be different and less severe for powdered cocaine than crack, however addiction is a risk which should be considered seriously. And again: I AM NOT AN EXPERT. PLEASE DO NOT RELY ON ME FOR INFORMATION ON HEALTH RISKS.

EDIT: Just to add although I didn't discuss the nature of the regulated framework for the legalised use of drugs, I personally favour providing registered addicts with maintenance doses of their drug through national health services from a non-commercial provider, to remove any incentive to encourage addiction. For further discussion on what a regulated post drug prohibition framework could look like please see this article by Steve Rolles in the British Medical Journal.

Melanie Phillips and Richard Dawkins

Melanie Phillips is a disgusting, puss filled, barely human wretch that every now and then crawls up from the underworld to spew faeces onto the pages of tabloid newspapers, magazines and sometimes our tv screens. Recently she wrote a vitriolic anti-science pile of poo here.

Normally I can't be bothered writing about such feeble minded drivel. I think mistakes like this are only worth discussing if there is a possibility I could be challenging an otherwise intelligent person's thinking. However what got my attention here me here is that she is using Dawkins' anti-religious rants to paint all scientists as irrational.

``For example, Professor Richard Dawkins' told me he was ‘not necessarily averse’ to the idea that life on earth had been created by a governing intelligence — provided that such an intelligence had arrived from another planet. How can it be that our pre-eminent apostle of reason appears to find little green men more plausible as an explanation for the origin of life than God?

The answer is that in certain areas science has overreached itself by trying to play God, and as a result has turned into an ideology.''

When I wrote my blog criticising Dawkins some people defended his inaccuracies saying they they wouldn't do any harm and they didn't understand why I was so annoyed. Well here is one reason why. It isn't the best example and I am sure there are plenty of others but i don't exactly read trash news very often and rarely get a chance to write about it, so I thought I'd take the opportunity here, along with a chance to try out a Hunter S. Thompson impression in the first paragraph.

Science Voting

The UK just had a general election during which there was an interesting attempt to create a pro science voting block by the Campaign for Science andEngineering in the UK (Case) and some science communicators. I don't know all the details of this since I live in Germany, I'm still largely blog unaware and don't even have a twitter account.

Nonetheless I noticed the scivote campaign backed by Case and that Brian Cox (whose style of popular physics communication is admittedly not always to my tastes) has been doing very good work raising public awareness of the funding crisis within physics, while Martin Robbins has been evaluating the various parties' science policies and Ben Goldacre has pushed for electing pro science MPs. Sadly this ended in bitter and dismal failure. Despite it's (lack of) immediate impact in this election it brings up interesting issues. What can or should scientists aim for in politics?

The first minimal possibility is a movement to only promote direct science interests -- i.e. funding, pay and support. For scientists funding, dominates. In the UK there are real dangers here due to the squeeze from recent economic problems. Additionally in my own field of particle physics this squeeze has come following a disastrous merging of funding councils which left particle physics burdened with liabilities from other research areas, and a push that research be justified in terms of immediate economic and social goals. For research into fundamental areas this is difficult as the economic and social benefits are in the long term and we cannot predict what technological applications will come from fundamental understandings of nature which we have not yet obtained. Nonetheless all technological progress is ultimately driven by fundamental research and without it society cannot advance.

Many physicsts have fought hard in this direction and it appears they at least had some success in influencing liberal democrat policy: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/thesword/2010/05/uk-election-lib-dems-plans-for.html.


The second possibility is to push governments to adopt an evidence based approach to policy making, where we clearly differentiate between the objective evidence based facts whhich should come from scientific experts and the values which should be specified by the representatives of the public. The lack of evidence informing UK policy came to prominance following the sacking of Prof David Nutt for offering his scientific opinion on the relative dangers of ecstacy and alcohol, which happened to offend the government and also previous tensions where the government ignored the scientific advice and reclassified cannabis to a class B drug.

Ultimately the framework of this discussion is meaningless since the aim of the drug classification is to rank them in terms of harm, while the true determining factor of whether or not drug laws or changes in penalties can be justified on a basis of protecting people harm needs to consider the effect of the laws themselves. Whether or not they actually reduce harm and if so to what extent. The evidence suggests drug laws fuel markets in addictive drugs, making more, not less, addicts and therefore more harm.

Nonetheless this restricted framework of drug classification based on harm, can be used to illustrate the kind of convolution between values and science I advocate. The harm rankings which were discussed by Nutt are in stark disagreement with current law. However one must be clear that some values go into such rankings because one is comparing different types of risk. How do you compare the risk of developing long term lung cancer with a risk of sudden death or blindness or developing mental health problems? So if we are to properly separate value judgments from the evidence, the scientists should provide quantisation on all the risks, while elected representatives of the people would provide weightings for the qualitatively different risks and the classification would be the result of combining these. This is not really how it currently works though and it is very hard to pick a reasonable set of values which could lead to the current drug classifications, given the science.

Many appear to want to go further still. As a third option a pro science movement might draw conclusions on issues where it seems clear most "normal" sets of values lead to to the same, or relatively similar policies. For example very few scientists would support the funding of homeopathy on the NHS. The technical science issue is whether or not homeopathy works, and it is clear that there is no evidence to believe it does work, many reasons to doubt it could and strong constraints on any impact beyond placebo in some cases. To believe, in spite of this, that homeopathy treatments should be funded by the public either requires a very strange love of giving people sugar pills or a strong belief that placebo benefits justify deceit coupled with an odd favoritsm for homeopathy over spiritual chanting or other equivalent options.

Finally it is clear that some science communicators want to go even further and promote issues where the values are shared by most scientists. For example in both animal rights issues and abortion I think many scientists may share similar opinions on these issues, and they have been cited as science reasons to vote for certain politicians. However there are clearly a wide range of fundamental values held on these issues and there is plenty of scope to use the same evidence, with the same understanding of it and draw dramatically different conclusions. If you fundamentally believe that an animal's life and comfort is of equal importance to a human's you will never support animal testing as a preliminary to human testing to protect humans from potential dangers. No matter how strongly you are aware of the scientific need to do them in order to save or help human lives. Similarly in abortion, while science tells us about the level of awareness and development of the life growing in the mothers womb, what weight you give to his/her life vs the impact on the mothers (and to a lesser extent fathers) life depends fundamentally on how you value it.

I personally really want to see the first and second options promoted. The latter is essentially already how the government is supposed to operate with science advisors, but it is obvious that something is badly broken in the system. If pro science lobby groups are going to pursue option three of taking policy stances against funding homeopathy and other obvious quack practices I am still comfortable as there does appear to be a need to rectify the current situation. I am a little worried though by the possibility of the forth option though, and while I agree with what is presented as the scientific viewpoint in both the animal rights and abortion issues I am well aware it is misleading to present them as uniform positions amongst scientists and feel it could be dishonest to cloak clear value based judgments like that under the name of science advocacy. I also wonder what else might get promoted in this way. I have already blogged on how Richard Dawkins has misrepresented what science can say and would not appreciate more of this.

I am not against science communicators offering their opinions on these issues or indeed joining political campaigns on them. But promoting issues like this (rather than simply informing the debate with the actual facts) should not be part of any science movement informing people which politicians' policies have the strongest evidence base, seeking to influence the election on this basis. Whether such a movement will ever properly emerge as an effective force still seems an open question though.


Anyway I know I'm new to this movement but .. um ... make me your leader? oh go on...

Hey you, you're a Nazi: A discrimination and immigration rant.

So I've been pretty busy lately and haven't posted, which is a bad start for the blog. So i thought I'd make the title suitable abusive to grab attention :). Nazi comparisons are generally thought poorly of because they are lazy and usually miss the complicated and specific ideas that characterise that ugly ideology. However I am not entirely joking as I will attempt draw out a specific similarity between an opinion that I imagine most readers will hold and specific (but horrifying) beliefs and actions of the Nazis.

Today I want to talk about restrictions on free migration and discrimination. I have always been puzzled by peoples differing attitudes towards nationality and race, and people's understanding of discrimination in general. It is widely accepted that treating people differently based on their so-called 'race' (by which I mean ethnic origin) and gender is unacceptable and many countries have laws prohibiting this. To some extent religion (which is sometimes included in the definition of race) is also protected by social and legal convention. When it comes to nationality however many countries have laws that require employers to discriminate on this basis when considering job applicants. Indeed restrictions on on immigration in general are a form of discrimination based on nationality. There are some reasons for this which I will discuss later, but I do think people are confused about why racism, and other forms of discrimination are inappropriate and why it is illegal and will discuss that first.

I have witnessed this confusion with religion. When someone makes offensive blanket statements of the nature "Muslims are terrorists so they deserve to be blown up" or "Muslims oppress women, so we should remove their civil liberties" etc and are accused of racism they defend themselves with the line "but Muslims are connected by religion, not racial identity". Regardless of whether the definition of racism is discrimination against "race, colour or creed" or the narrower one focused only on ethnicity, this rather misses the point. Either way they are being an offensive bigot.

These statements are inappropriate because of their blanket nature. Everyone in a particular group is treated as if they all share some common characteristic, simply because there is a perceived (true of false) correlation. Even if that correlation is true (and remember correlation does not imply causation) it is still unacceptable because how an individual is treated then depends on the actions or beliefs of other individuals, whose behavior they have no control over. We are effectively punishing them for things which they couldn't change and bear no responsibility for.

Muslims who do not supports terrorism should not be held responsible for a tiny number who carry such acts out, anymore than I should be responsible for the God Delusion written by Richard Dawkins just because we are both atheists and scientists. Similarly those specific Muslims who believe in the oppression of women should not be held responsible for the actions of more liberal Muslims who allow women to dress liberally, thus causing earthquakes, (do you see what I did there?) and of course needless to say vice versa.

The same logic applies to all forms of discrimination which are based on correlations rather than causation and as such all should be deemed socially unacceptable. Of course there are good historical and social reasons why we perceive certain types of prejudice differently. Someone making jokes about the French in the pub should not usually be regarded with the same disgust as someone making fun of 'niggers' because the intent is rarely the same. I myself often hurl racist abuse about English people ('racism' is correct here because they are in fact a race -- of cunts). It is not the same as someone shouting nigger because my intent and meaning are different, I am invoking distinctions between individuals, which I do not believe, for humor. Unlike jokes from racists, my humor does not derive from a shared belief but the ridiculousness of me holding it, and it is not an attempt to encourage such beliefs. This should not be confused with those people who genuinely hold grudges against English people.

There is a widespread social problem, in many societies, of discrimination and indeed violence against people because of the colour of their skin and that lead to specific laws against racism. Though qualitatively different (it's not visible, meaning you won't be as abused/intimidated by passing strangers etc) there is also a problem within Scotland of anti-English discrimination, which despite my earlier joke, is not based on race but nationality. While some individuals might genuinely harbor hatred for the French it is not a wide spread social problem that I am aware of, so it's understandable that governments don't have policies to deal with it. However even if some discrimination is not a widespread social problem, the individual experiencing it still gets disadvantaged through no fault of their own. The reasons why racism is socially unacceptable also apply, such discrimination is not acceptable.

Let me now return to the question of laws restricting immigration. These laws dramatically alter an individuals quality of life based on their arbitrary association. Just because there is a line on maps separating Spain from Portugal and Morocco does not mean that individuals from those countries would perform less well in a job in Madrid than, say, someone from Barcelona. Nor does it make them more of a security threat if they wish to visit Madrid. It is also not the case that individuals from Portugal and Morocco deserve or need less (or more, I have no idea how the welfare provisions of these countries compare) financial aid when unable to work.

So why do so many people support such discriminatory laws? There are various justifications put forward connected to linguistic, cultural and historical differences, but all such these arguments could equally be applied to minorities living within a country. Many nations are not monolingual, many have groups of people who typically have different values and ideas about how society should be run, but discrimination against such a group is nonetheless prohibited because people are still entitled to be treated as individuals. The differences mentioned above should only be used if they apply to a specific individual and only when relevant, i.e. it's OK to deny someone a job writing newspaper articles in English, if they do not know English, but not OK to refuse them a job (on that basis) where communication is not an issue.

The other defense is more pragmatic. It is a question of space, infrastructure and social services. If I proposed removing all restrictions on immigration in the UK tomorrow most people would say that this would lead to so much immigration that the UK infrastructure could not cope and the UK quality of life would be dramatically decreased with massive overcrowding and I believe, if done as an isolated nation at least, this is correct.

The question of jobs is another issue. Often politicians campaign on "British jobs for British people". But why would I care about the nationality? With a job offer there is automatically the statement that the immigrating individual will consume less than he provides (otherwise there wouldn't, or at least shouldn't be a job). That individual will benefit society. In addition since I don't personally feel any special empathy for people born in the same country as me I would be happiest if the person who got the job is one who would be most helped by it and that will typically be the person from the poorest background, most likely a person from abroad since the UK has relatively high quality of life.

Nonetheless the existence of a welfare state provides some pragmatic arguments for restricting low paid jobs going to people outside the country. If we are instead able to fill it that vacancy with someone from within, who was previously unemployed, then we no longer need to provide them with basic necessities like housing and enough money for food.

So it appears there is some truth to this argument, but it is not one from the principle. Perhaps we would tolerate racial discrimination or even segregation within a country if there were pragmatic reasons for maintaining it? The thought makes me want to vomit. I imagine defenders of apartheid in South Africa put forward similar arguments, which appear to have been falsified since, but nonetheless I doubt many would claim apartheid disgusts them because the pragmatic defence turned out to be wrong.

Similarly I am sure slavery could have been defended with claims that the economy and way of life would collapse in the US and Europe and I know it was defended in such a way in the Roman republic and empire. I have no idea if this pragmatic argument might be correct or not. Perhaps at the time abolishing slavery would have had catastrophic consequences for the Roman elite, and their way way of disintegrated. Maybe civilisation would have even been set back. That wouldn't change my stance, I am still disgusted by slavery and were I present in the time of the Roman republic with my modern mindset I would either stand up and oppose the slavery or be sickened by my cowardice and failure to do so (admittedly the latter is more likely :)).

Finally now I arrive at the point behind my title. I recently read The War of the world by Niall Ferguson where he describes not just the horrors of the holocaust and the Nazi's racial ideology, but also their expansionist plans and economic ideas. My understanding from the book is that Hitler believed that he needed to expand the German Reich because Germany required more living space and raw materials for the German people. To this end when they invaded countries to the east of Germany, like Poland and Russia, they did not only murder Jews to sate the hatred and disgust Hitlers rhetoric had inspired they also carried out ethnic cleansing on other perceived non-Germanic races, e.g. Slavic people, because they believed they needed the living space for Germans.

In this sense the pragmatic defense and practise of immigration controls can be compared to the Nazis expansionist ideology. The justification is very similar, arguing that one nation (or supposed race in Hitlers case) need a certain amount of space to have a reasonable quality of life. The outcome is also similar. If one compares infant mortality and average life expectancy (note this will also be strongly affected by the former, I couldn't find a post infancy life expectancy comparison), then one can see the dramatic variations depending on where you live, 180 per 1000 to 2 per 1000 and 30 to 80 respectively! By refusing to admit people into this country we condemn them (on average) to an early death. While this more passive role seems less cold blooded than the direct murder of millions of Slavic people, we know the consequences of our actions. Does anyone really doubt that when we refuse immigration to someone from a very poor nation or deport them back if they arrived here "illegally" that they will have a significantly higher chance of dying young? It may be called "economic migration" but in this case at least economics is life.

I am not saying that we can suddenly open our borders on our own, I cowardly bow to the pragmatic and selfish argument here, but we should recognise the abhorrence of the current situation. Freedom of movement and a free choice of where to live is not only a basic freedom, which one should expect for everyone, but it is also one which one which can save lives. We need to demand that the politicians we elect will allow more migration into our countries not restrict it further as all major parties in the wealthy western nations seem to propose. We need to insist also that they work together to bring a global end to restrictions on economic migration, as well as universal welfare provision so that there is lower safety net protecting everyone at the bottom, not just people in wealthy nations.

This is a lofty goal and I have no real plan to bring it about or even any proof to offer that it is at all achievable. It perhaps is my hippie moment, but nonetheless a change in attitude will help a lot and moderate increases in the legal migration into the wealthy nations is achievable and will help real lives. And at the very least people should see immigration laws for what they really are, discriminatory and destructive of life.

And until you commit to this, you are a Nazi.