The premise of religious tolerance

The increasingly (to me) annoying linguist Sylfest Lomheim recently fielded a question about the use of the term "honor killings" ("æresdrap") on the Språkteigen podcast. A listener wondered whether using the term "honor" didn't constitute an implicit acceptance of these kinds of killings, and that we should start calling them "shame killings" ("skamsdrap") instead. Not sure if that term is any better; I'd prefer calling them "murder" ("mord") and be done with it.

In any event, Lomheim agreed, pointing out that according to "our values" there is nothing honorable about such killings.

Which brings me to an article Bruce Bawer recently wrote in the Norwegian online journal Human Rights Service, in which he discusses the rhetorical concept "us vs. the others," which many left-leaning Norwegian writers have used to condemn his and others' views on the threat fundamentalists pose to Europe.

P J O'Rourke made a similar point soon after 9/11 when he took a faddishly "open-minded" woman in London to task for not conceding this point:

I had dinner with the critic and television commentator Clive James and his assistant. The assistant was an able and well-educated young woman who could not be convinced by Clive that in the matter of moral values there was such a thing as a superior culture. "They cover their women in the ballroom drapes!" Clive said. "Your dad can have you stoned to death for not marrying some old goat!"

"I wouldn't call it an inferior culture," his assistant said.

"What about Somalia?! What about clitorectomies?!"

"Of course I'm a feminist," his assistant said. "But I resist the idea of an inferior culture."

Although Bruce's book While Europe Slept has gotten lots of praise and was nominated for a prestigious award (and even cites my wisdom in its pages), it will take a lot to get it translated to Norwegian. Why? Because there are too many Norwegians in the so-called cultural elite (which in my view is neither) who categorically reject anything that is critical of cultures originating in less-developed economies. In other words, people who don't even want the debate, since they have the monopoly on what is true tolerance.

So all this got me thinking. I am an absolute proponent of religious freedom and tolerance. I refuse to believe that there's something inherent in Islam that breeds terrorism. Choose to accept the view that clitorectomies, suicide bombings, sniping at random cars, stoning of rape victims, etc., etc., are artifacts not of a defective religion but of a backwards and defective society in general and leadership in particular. It's both a matter of principle and some of my own experience - virtually every Moslem I've ever met strikes me as humane and civilized as anyone else, e.g., there are some wonderful people and some flaming assholes among them, just like there are in any other group.

But it seems to me that religious tolerance is a more complicated thing than we're willing to realize. Going into a discussion about religious truth, there are three mutually exclusive premises from which everyone has to choose:

1. There is one true religion, and every other religion is a closer or more distant approximation to the one true religion. If people do awful things, it's because they have strayed from the one true religion.
2. Religion is entirely a human invention and therefore entirely subject to human fallibility. If people do awful things, it's because they're awful human beings, and if they use religion as a pretext, they're not just awful but also deluded.
3. All religions are manifestations of an intrinsic striving for a higher truth that will ultimately lead to a true religion (in 35,000 - 45,000 years, more or less). In other words, there is a cosmic truth, but all dogma is mostly an exercise in vanity. If people do awful things, it's because they're awful people, and if they use religion as a pretext it's because they - like everyone else - are mostly lost souls.

So 3) is kind of fanciful, but needs to be included to make the argument exhaustive. In any event, the disparity in these premises makes it very difficult to have any kind of meaningful discussion about religious convictions.

The problem is that religious fundamentalists bring 1) into every discussion. Among Muslim fundamentalists, for example, religious tolerance is all about allowing them to do whatever they think is right, but it has nothing to do with allowing other religions (which in their view have it all wrong) the same courtesy. If Norway has a problem with clitoroctomies, murder, etc., it's because Norwegians are on the wrong religious track, though it's more expedient to say that tolerance is the problem.

Bruce is right to point out that the radical chic set in Norway are way off, intellectually and morally. And he's probably right that they are that way because they're cowards. Who in their right mind would stand up at an LO, AUF, or RV, or SU, or even KrFU meeting these days and say "you know, we really should ask why so many of these rapes are being perpetrated by immigrant youth," or "you know, sometimes we should give Israel credit for doing the right thing?"

They'd lose all their friends, many of them their jobs, and their membership in several communities.