Bird’s Eye View: Religion – Thy Name Is Superstition (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the March 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Religion – Thy Name Is Superstition

‘A Pakistani court has sentenced a Muslim woman to death for committing “blasphemy” by sharing images deemed to be insulting to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and one of his wives, also considered a holy personage by many Muslims. The trial court in the northern Pakistani city of Rawalpindi on Wednesday sentenced Aneeqa Ateeq under the country’s strict blasphemy laws, which impose a mandatory death penalty for insulting the Prophet Muhammad’ (aljazeera.com, 20 December).

Pakistan is one of thirteen countries, all of a Muslim majority, where blasphemy is punishable by death. The past lies like a nightmare upon the present: ‘Two years after Michelle, 15, was kidnapped, sold, forced to convert to Islam and married to a stranger, relatives still ostracise her. “My aunts and uncles have left us, and my two older brothers, till a few months ago, were not even talking to me,” said Michelle, talking to IPS over the phone from Faisalabad, in the Punjab province of Pakistan. They believe she has brought dishonour to them. Her captors and even the cleric who officiated the marriage are free despite committing multiple offences, including abduction, trafficking and rape. “There are several laws that can be invoked for tackling offences, such as kidnapping and abductions,” lamented Peter Jacob, executive director of the Center for Social Justice (CSJ), a research and advocacy organisation. “But the prosecution has failed to do so”’ (ipsnews.net, 19 January). According to one Dr. S. Faizi: ‘It is important that Muslims reclaim the Quran, discarding the distorting interpretations by patriarchal men’ (countercurrents.org, 18 January). The humanist and feminist author, 59-year-old Taslima Nasrin, who was born in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh, from where she is banished, her books banned and bounty placed on her head) would likely disagree, having stated: ‘The Quran can no longer serve as the basis of our law. A thousand years ago it may have been useful for fending off barbarism. But we live in modern times, the era of science and technology. The Quran has become superfluous. It stands in the way of progress and the way of women’s emancipation’ (Index, September/October 1994).

Bad science

Believe it or not, religion was humans’ first attempt at science. We could not explain the forces of nature, the rising and setting of the Sun, phases of the moon, etc., and ascribed them to the supernatural. Viewed through the lens of the materialist conception of history, it can be seen as a necessary adjunct to our development. Yet religion has long served the interests of the minority master class. Science too. Science itself has become bourgeois and is dependent upon capitalism for its operation and expansion. In 1850s America a Dr Cartwright identified a condition, drapetomania, that caused black slaves to flee plantations. Russian psychiatrists famously aided Stalin by diagnosing dissidents as insane. Contemporary examples include the sociobiology of E.O. Wilson and Steven Pinker’s evolutionary psychology. An article titled ‘Capitalists Only “Trust the Science” When It Suits Their Agenda’ (leftvoice, 21 January) explores this theme further.

’Even when ‘good’ research is done, the products of that research still exist in a social milieu: not all research or results see the light of day in publication and distribution. That information must still navigate a web of entities with vested interests in the ‘outcomes’ of science. Often, when a study uncovers information that certain entities (the funding agency, the university, the government, corporations in a particular industry) don’t like, they bury or discredit the study. For example, Katherine M. Flegal has been the victim of a 15-year-long campaign to discredit her research demonstrating that being “overweight” is not actually a risk factor for health. Some resistance to her work comes from the weight loss and health insurance industries, but some of it also comes from another classic abuser of “science”: Big Tobacco. When analyzing the data from another study, Flegal found that some of the perceived risks of obesity were actually due to smoking, which had not been accounted for in the original study’.

Reflecting last year on how her 2005 and 2013 papers were received, Dr. Flegal concluded: ‘Scientific findings should be evaluated on their merits, not on the basis of whether they fit a desired narrative’. Indeed.

Good science

‘In an admirable, longstanding tradition, heedful Americans are taking multiple, pragmatic, science-based precautions against a virus that […] has killed 900,000 people, […] and is still infecting almost 700,000 people a day. LOL. Just kidding. In moronic fact, […] crackpots still roam the land, spewing their crazy. […] Add to their ranks […] Christopher Key, who as bonkers head of the Vaccine Police […] now advocates […] drinking urine to ward off COVID. He cites […] “antidotal” evidence, to support urine therapy; he himself has been drinking his own urine for 23 years, evidently proving, “God’s given us everything we need,” except perhaps a working brain’ (commondreams.org, 12 January).

When you doubt ‘our’ leaders or science alone can save us, and begin to question the ‘alternative facts,’ distortions, lies and misinformation of mainstream media, conspiracy cranks and fundamentalist fakirs, consider instead scientific socialism which provides an analysis of the capitalist system that explains how wealth comes to be produced and distributed and who gets what from the pool of social production. It is able to place this in an historical context showing the development of its productive relationships from past systems. It is also able to define the economic limitations of political action within the system and reliably predict the results of various political policies. Another world is possible, one where scientific progress comes hand in hand with societal progress, which is in turn driven by personal betterment of every member of that society. Let’s make it so.

World View: The persecution of Taslima Nasrin (1995)

From the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religious groups have a notorious history of stifling dissent by any means possible. And if, in Britain, nonbelievers are no longer persecuted, tortured and killed it is because the superstitious myths and rituals with which religion cloaks itself are no longer taken seriously by the majority of the population. But there are countries where the heads of religion are still able to wield considerable power and influence. To belong to a different faith or to question that religion and try to have a reasoned discussion instead of blindly accepting its "rules" is to take great personal risks.

The humanist and feminist author, 32-year-old Taslima Nasrin has fallen foul of Muslim fundamentalists in her native Bangladesh because her novel Lajja published in 1993 depicts Hindus mistreated by Muslims. In an interview given to the Calcutta newspaper the Statesman she stated that the Sharia law (the Muslim religious law which makes women second-class citizens) needed reforming but this was misquoted as her saying that the Koran needed reform and fuelled fundamentalist anger still further.

Arrest warrant

Fundamentalist Muslims demonstrated in the streets threatening to kill her, and the Bangladeshi government, afraid of public disorder, succumbed to threats and issued a warrant for her arrest under article 295(a) of the Penal Code for "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings". This law was introduced by the British during the days of the British Empire and was intended to prevent inter-religious fighting which would have made Asia more difficult to govern. Ironically, it was now being used to further religious differences and fundamentalist hatred.

After the warrant was issued for her arrest on 4 June 1993, Nasrin went into hiding for a couple of months before appearing in court in Dhaka on 3 August, accompanied by her lawyer, Sara Hossain. She was granted bail. It has been claimed that the secular Bangladeshi government wanted to give her an opportunity to leave the country. This is quite possible given the widespread international support that she received, since her continued persecution by either fundamentalists or the Bangladeshi courts would have created further embarrassment for the Bangladeshi government.

PEN, the international writers' organisation, offered assistance and within a week Nasrin fled to Sweden where she was granted political asylum. Shortly after she appeared in Stockholm to receive the Kurt Tucholsky prize which is given annually to a writer in exile. In 1992 it was awarded to Salman Rushdie, also in hiding from fundamentalist death threats.

Fundamentalist insanity

In accepting the prize, Nasrin thanked the Swedish government for granting her asylum and pledged to continue her fight against "fundamentalist insanity . . . which is spreading darkness in the world". She is trapped in a conflict between liberal secularism and religious fundamentalism, with, the extreme Islamic group, Jamaat stating that "the blood lust will have to be satisfied elsewhere".

Nasrin had criticised Islamic law on previous occasions; in an interview for the New York Times she stated that: "some men would keep women in chains-veiled, illiterate and in the kitchen". She added: "There are 60 million women in my country, not more than 15 per cent of them can read and write. How can Bangladesh become a modern country and find its place in the world when it is dragged backwards by reactionary attitudes towards half its people? It is my belief that politics cannot be based on religion if our women are to be free".

In an interview for Index (September/October 1994) Nasrin was asked if she wanted to revise the Koran. She stated:

"The Quran can no longer serve as the basis of our law. A thousand years ago it may have been useful for fending off barbarism. But we live in modern times, the era of science and technology. The Quran has become superfluous. It stands in the way of progress and the way of women's emancipation."

Asked of she still considered herself a Muslim, Taslima Nasrin replied:

"No, I am an atheist. All forms of religion are anachronistic to me. I dream of a world without religion. Religion gives birth to fundamentalism as surely as the seed gives birth to the tree. We can tear the tree down, but if the seed remains it will produce another tree. While the seed remains we cannot root out fundamentalism."

Religion is the badge of the mentally-enslaved. It uses a cloak of mystification to reinforce its authority by promising a mythical afterlife as a reward for blind obedience and by making threats of eternal punishment, backed up by intimidation and persecution for those who do not submit. It has been a useful tool in the hands of the ruling classes to keep their subjects subservient.

Carl Pinel