Whoops!

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Former exorcist and current Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has (to quote the Friendly Atheist) “pushed for a voucher program that would allow state funds to be used to pay for religious schools.” The Friendly Atheist is not so keen on the idea (he believes it to be unconstitutional), but I’m inclined to be more relaxed. A little mumbo jumbo is a cheap price to pay for a good education. Religious schools in this country (and elsewhere) have a long record of delivering an education that can be of lower cost and higher quality than that provided for in the state system. And they also have a long and shameful record, not least in corners of the Islamic world, as perpetrators of ignorance and division.

The key is regulation. To secure eligibility for voucher-status, religious schools, and what they teach (not too much mumbo jumbo, please, admission for both sexes, and members of all faiths and of none, and so on), would have to go through a tough vetting both to begin with and, say, annually. And, if the experience in the UK is anything to go by, you’d probably need to vet the vetters too. I don’t know whether Gov. Jindal’s legislation provides for all this or not, but, in any event, it would be unlikely to be enough for one Louisiana (Republican) lawmaker. Valarie Hodges.

Livingston Parish News takes up the story:

WATSON — Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.

“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said…HB976, now signed into law as Act 2, proposed, among other things, a voucher program allowing state educational funds to be used to send students to schools run by religious groups…Hodges, who represents District 64 on the northwest side of the parish, and another freshman lawmaker in the local delegation, Clay Schexnayder from Dist. 81 in the southwest, voted with the House majority in favor of HB976.

The school funding mechanism, however, did not come up for a vote until the end of the session. By then, a Muslim-based school had applied for support through the new voucher system.

During debate over the MFP (Minimum Foundation Program) funding formula, Hodges learned more about the consequences of the educational changes. She voted against the new MFP funding formula; Schexnayder voted for it.

“Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion,” Hodges said.

Oh dear. I’m not necessarily opposed to (mild, constructive, gently patriotic, and minimally superstitious) state religions, but I suspect—well over two centuries into the First Amendment—that the time for that in the US may have passed.

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In the Beginning

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Much as I am not a fan of the public nuisance better known as Karen Armstrong, the opening two paragraphs of a review she has written for the FT today caught my eye:

Over the course of his long, distinguished career, Geza Vermes, the first professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford university, has made a major contribution to our understanding of the historical Jesus. In Christian Beginnings, as in his groundbreaking work Jesus the Jew (1973), he shows that Jesus would have been a recognisable and familiar figure to his contemporaries. A healer, exorcist and compelling preacher, he was the latest in a line of charismatic prophets who existed for centuries alongside the established priestly tradition and offered an alternative form of Judaism, based on vision, ecstasy and miraculous healing, and frequently in conflict with the Israelite ruling class.

In this book, however, Vermes takes the story further, showing how the human figure of Jesus became increasingly other-worldly until, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, he was declared fully divine. Vermes points out quite correctly that in much of the New Testament, Jesus is perceived as “a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders and signs” (Acts 2.22), a typical definition of a charismatic prophet. In Judaism, the title “Son of God” was simply a human being who enjoyed special intimacy with God and had been given a divine task: kings, prophets and priests – and the entire people of Israel – were all called “sons of God” in this sense…

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For Thee But Not For Me (Ctd)

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Cardinal Séan O’Malley , one of the leading figures in the US Roman Catholic hierarchy, blogs:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this week upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s “mandate” requiring adult Americans to purchase health care. The full range of the Court’s decision requires further study. Central to the decision, however, is the fact that the law will significantly expand health care for over thirty million people. The Catholic Bishops have for decades supported the principle of guaranteed access to health care as a basic human right. Our position has been and remains based in the dignity of the person and the right to health care which requires protection in civil law and public policy.

Read on, and you see that the Cardinal’s generosity (with other people’s money) does not stop there:

..The ACA does not adequately address the needs of immigrant communities in our country. Health care as a human right and the need for it among some of the most vulnerable people in our nation is one of the reasons why access to health care should be extended beyond ACA.

But there’s a catch:

While supporting [the] extension of health care, the U.S. Bishops Conference reminded us this week that since the passage of ACA, the Church has encountered significant challenges to its institutional religious freedom. Most notable is the requirement that Catholic health care, social service and educational institutions provide services to their employees which violate Catholic teaching..

Hmmm, O’Malloy’s church favors the introduction of “guaranteed access” to health care (which must, by definition, involve imposing an obligation on the population as a whole to pay for it) while reserving for itself the right to ignore any aspects of the law that “violate Catholic teaching”.

Interesting

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The Islamic Reformation

Posted on July 7, 2012 by David Hume

In the wake of 9/11 there was a lot of talk about an “Islamic Reformation.” Such discussion was a key pointer to elite and public ignorance about the exact nature of the Reformation. On the one hand, the Reformation did allow for the emergence of what we might term today the democratic liberal consensus in regards to freedom of conscience in matters of religion, as radical Protestants refused even the pretense of a universal church which was inclusive of a whole society. But the other face of the Reformation was a streak of fanatical megalomania and iconoclasm which had a symbiotic relationship with what we may term the “Wars of Religion.”

There is an Islamic Reformation underway. That is why Muslims are destroying the holy sites of other Muslims:

Timbuktu now endures the destruction of many of the city’s ancient monuments and religious sites. The devastation is reminiscent of the Taliban’s 2001 attacks on the towering Buddha statues of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Four of Timbuktu’s landmarks are included on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites, but history and heritage mean nothing to the leadership of Ansar Dine, which has destroyed at least six above-ground mausoleums of religious figures regarded as saints and, on Monday, the door of one of the city’s most sacred mosques.

Timbuktu, a center of Sufi mysticism, apparently represents a broad-minded world view at odds with Ansar Dine’s radical conservatism. When asked this week whether the destruction of these cultural artifacts will continue, a spokesman for the sect told the New York Times: “Of course. What doesn’t correspond to Islam, we are going to correct.”

“Radical conservatism”? First, let’s dismiss the idea that these older Islamic traditions were tolerant New Age syndicates. The history of Islam in West Africa is as brutal as anywhere else, with the enslavement of the kafir serving as major source of the human trade which fed the core Muslim world. But more importantly, the “radical conservatism” that the writer speaks of is fundamentally a paradox. Many “conservative” Islamic traditions, most especially Salafism and its affiliated siblings, are radical reconstructions of an idealized Muslim utopia which in all likelihood never existed. They are in other words radical but absolutely not conservative. Like radical Protestants attempting to recreate a “primitive Christianity” which only existed in their own imagination these Muslims jettison the organically evolved wisdom of the history of the Islamic community for their own stark and crisp interpretations. In a generic descriptive sense this is radically progressive.

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A Question of Identity

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

I’m no fan of conscription, to put it mildly, but, if a state is going to insist on it, it should do so fairly.That does not appear to be the case in Israel, where the ability of the ultra-orthodox to avoid compulsory military service smacks more of religious privilege than religious freedom.

The New York Times reports:

Last year, about 17 percent of 18-year-old Haredim [ultra-orthodox] joined the Army, compared with about 75 percent of other Jewish men; an additional 14 percent of Haredim and 8 percent of Arab citizens signed up for civilian service. Over all, just over half of Israelis now do military duty, a far cry from the generally accepted notion that there is a universal draft.

But Israel’s governing coalition is in trouble over plans to change the rules granting an exemption from the draft to thousands studying in the country’s yeshivas (thanks to a Supreme Court ruling it is obliged to do so by August 1):

The leader of a committee that Mr. Netanyahu appointed — and this week disbanded — to prepare a replacement law released a 100-page report on Wednesday that called for 80 percent of the ultra-Orthodox to serve in the military by 2016, and for fines of about $25,000 for those who do not.

Shaul Mofaz, the Kadima Party leader whose surprise alliance with Mr. Netanyahu two months ago created an unheard-of 94-seat majority in the 120-member Parliament, said Wednesday that he would quit the coalition within days if the committee’s work did not form the basis of the new law. But religious and right-wing factions have also vowed to bolt the coalition if personal sanctions are included or Arabs are not drafted as well.

“It’s a possibility of civil war between sectors,” said Yedidia Stern, who…served on the committee charged with rewriting the draft law.

“What’s at stake is two cultures, two civilizations,” Professor Stern added, referring to the ultra-Orthodox…and other Jews here. “These two civilizations used to live in some kind of peace because each one thought that the other is going to disappear eventually. Nowadays I think everybody realizes that the two camps are here to stay, and we have to decide what will be the identity in the public sphere.”

At issue is not so much the pragmatic needs of the military, where integrating large numbers of Haredim promises to be more hassle than help, but a growing resentment over who serves the state and who reaps its rewards. Last year, about 17 percent of 18-year-old Haredim joined the Army, compared with about 75 percent of other Jewish men; an additional 14 percent of Haredim and 8 percent of Arab citizens signed up for civilian service. Over all, just over half of Israelis now do military duty, a far cry from the generally accepted notion that there is a universal draft.

…Some 56 percent of Haredim live in poverty, and the average annual income in their community is about half that of the national norm, with many of their large families relying on welfare, housing grants and subsidies for yeshiva study.

If demographics are destiny, it makes sense that this long-simmering tension is reaching a rolling boil. While Haredim account for less than 10 percent of Israel’s seven million citizens, and Arabs 20 percent, their high birthrates mean that about 46 percent of today’s kindergartners come from the two groups, growth that is “challenging the basic formula” of Israeli society, according to Aluf Benn, editor of the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz.

“These groups don’t want a larger slice of the pie, they want a different recipe,” Mr. Benn said in an interview. “If Israel defines itself as a Jewish democratic state, the Arabs would do away with the Jewish part, and the ultra-Orthodox at least in their dream would get rid of the democracy. They respect the authority of the rabbis.”

Einat Wilf, one of five lawmakers who served on the committee, said that the solution was not a universal draft, but an acceptance that “the people’s army” is a fiction — and a reworking of benefits accordingly.

“We have to accept the fact that 64 years ago they did not want the state to come about, and they still have no faith in the structures of the state,” Ms. Wilf said, referring to the utra-Orthodox and Arab citizens. “Solidarity is a two-way street. The state will guarantee everyone the absolute minimum, but beyond that the state will reward people who give, not just people who take.”

Starship Troopers here we come?

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Happy Independence Day

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

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Balancing policies

Posted on July 4, 2012 by David Hume

I don’t follow day-to-day politics with much zest. But some are speculating that John Roberts’ tortured ruling in favor of ObamaCare may pave the way for overturning the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action. If true, what do people think about such a trade? I do wonder if the supreme court invalidating affirmative action would have any real effect on the marketplace; “diversity programs” seem to be spliced into the DNA of the modern corporation at this point. That being said, there is some suggestion that Roberts may be willing to close the era which began with Great Society whereby the white majority offers special dispensations to the black minority in light of its history of discrimination.

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Putting away childish things

Posted on July 3, 2012 by David Hume

CPAC’s boy wonder swings left:

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”

…

“I started reflecting on a lot of what I wrote, just thinking about what I had said and what I had done and started reading a lot of other stuff, and not just political stuff,” Krohn said. “I started getting into philosophy — Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Kant and lots of other German philosophers. And then into present philosophers — Saul Kripke, David Chalmers. It was really reading philosophy that didn’t have anything to do with politics that gave me a breather and made me realize that a lot of what I said was ideological blather that really wasn’t meaningful. It wasn’t me thinking. It was just me saying things I had heard so long from people I thought were interesting and just came to believe for some reason, without really understanding it. I understood it enough to talk about it but not really enough to have a conversation about it.”

Jonathan Krohn’s original manifesto was embarrassing in a way that a 13 year old’s musings tend to be. More blame should go to those who took advantage of the freak factor here. It’s not very surprising that Krohn’s reading of philosophy pushed him to the cultural Left. The modern American social Right doesn’t do very well at elucidating a high-toned and intellectually appealing vision. Most people are not reading James Kalb, they’re reading James Dobson. This is fine when it comes to raw numbers, Dobson is more appealing and accessible to the average person than James Kalb. But for someone with raw intelligence, as Jonathan Krohn obviously possessed, Dobson will become weak tea. Truly intellectual conservatives tend to be libertarians, or often of a more sectarian bent (e.g., traditionalist Catholics appealing to traditionalist Catholics, or conservative Reformed Christians appealing to like-minded Protestants). I don’t believe that modern social liberalism offers a genuine vision for human flourishing. But to convince people like Jonathan Krohn as that move to more sophisticated lines of reasoning conservatives need to argue at the same level as liberal intellectuals.

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Not Necessarily Woo-Woo?

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Sam Harris goes on a spiritquest:

In writing my next book, I will have to confront the animosity that many people feel for the term “spiritual.” Whenever I use the word—as in referring to meditation as a “spiritual practice”—I inevitably hear from fellow skeptics and atheists who think that I have committed a grievous error.

The word “spirit” comes from the Latin spiritus, which in turn descends from the Greek pneuma, meaning “breath.” Around the 13th century, the term became bound up with notions of immaterial souls, supernatural beings, ghosts, etc. It acquired other connotations as well—we speak of the spirit of a thing as its most essential principle, or of certain volatile substances and liquors as spirits. Nevertheless, many atheists now consider “spiritual” thoroughly poisoned by its association with medieval superstition.

I strive for precision in my use of language, but I do not share these semantic concerns…

We must reclaim good words and put them to good use—and this is what I intend to do with “spiritual.” I have no quarrel with Hitch’s general use of it to mean something like “beauty or significance that provokes awe,” but I believe that we can also use it in a narrower and, indeed, more transcendent sense.

Of course, “spiritual” and its cognates have some unfortunate associations unrelated to their etymology—and I will do my best to cut those ties as well. But there seems to be no other term (apart from the even more problematic “mystical” or the more restrictive “contemplative”) with which to discuss the deliberate efforts some people make to overcome their feeling of separateness—through meditation, psychedelics, or other means of inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness. And I find neologisms pretentious and annoying. Hence, I appear to have no choice: “Spiritual” it is.

Dear me, he’ll be writing about searching for meaning next.

But, whatever floats his boat…

H/t: Andrew Sullivan

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Same Script, Different Stage

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Cross-Posted on the Corner:

Remember the Buddhas of Bamiyan?

Well, here we go again…

Via the Guardian:

Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes have destroyed the centuries-old mausoleums of saints in the Unesco-listed city of Timbuktu in front of shocked locals, witnesses say.

The attack by the al-Qaida-linked Ansar Dine group came days after Unesco placed Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger and will recall the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of two sixth-century statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan.

“They are armed and have surrounded the sites with pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly,” said a local journalist, Yeya Tandina. Tandina and other witnesses said Ansar Dine had already destroyed the mausoleums of three local saints – Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi el-Mokhtar and Alfa Moya – and at least seven tombs.

“The mausoleum doesn’t exist any more and the cemetery is as bare as a soccer pitch,” a local teacher, Abdoulaye Boulahi, said of the Mahmoud burial place.

“There’s about 30 of them breaking everything up with pick-axes and hoes. They’ve put their Kalashnikovs down by their side. These are shocking scenes for the people in Timbuktu,” said Boulahi.

Ansar Dine backs strict sharia law, and considers the shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam to be idolatrous. Sufi shrines have also been attacked by hardline Salafists in Egypt and Libya in the past year. Locals said the attackers had threatened to destroy all of the 16 main mausoleum sites. The Unesco director general, Irina Bokova, called for an immediate halt. Late on Saturday, Tandina said Ansar Dine had halted the attacks. Attempts to contact members of the group were unsuccessful.

Ansar Dine has gained the upper hand over less-well-armed Tuareg-led separatists since the two joined forces to rout government troops and seize control in April of the northern two-thirds of the inland west African state…

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