Observations: Hooked on the opium of the people (1986)

The Observations Column from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever Marx's description of religion — "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the soul of soul-less conditions. It is the opium of the people", most religious people would probably deny that they are oppressed or live in soul-less conditions. But there is obviously something missing (even if it is only logic) from the lives of people who will go to great pains to live their lives in the way that is approved by their particular god, but will never be able to explain just what god is. or why he should be so concerned about the use of contraceptives by catholics, or why it is so imperative that muslims and jews slaughter their animals by slitting the throat and letting them bleed to death.

In an attempt to make some sense of the Christian faith, the Bishop of Durham has probably come as close as anyone to telling us what god is:

We are faced with the claim that God is prepared to work knock-down physical miracles in order to select a number of people into the secret of his incarnation, resurrection and salvation. but is not prepared to use such methods in order to deliver from Auschwitz, prevent Hiroshima, overcome famine or bring about a bloodless transformation of apartheid. Such a God is surely a cultic idol.

(From a speech to the York Meeting of the General Synod - 6 July 1986)

Understandably, the bishop is out of favour with some of his colleagues who prefer not to mention these contradictions in god's character. This is not the only thing rocking the boat in the Church of England at the moment. Another problem that the hierarchy are wrestling with is whether women should be able to become priests. This should be much easier to solve however. The Bible itself gives clear guidance on this - 1 Corinthians 14. verses 34-35:

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the Church.

Another rather sexist passage, which Margaret Thatcher, as a Christian, will have read, is I Timothy 2. verses 11-14:

Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a women to teach, not usurp authority over the man. but to be in silence For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

Christianity of course does not have the monopoly on nastiness, racism and sexism. The Koran also has its fair share. For a religion which claims to teach universal brotherhood. it's hard to see what the angel Gabriel was getting at when he passed on this, from Surah V. verse 51:

O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are the friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

"Opium of the People" is possibly a more appropriate description than Marx intended. The junkies of religion who graduate to the stage where they are taking regular injections of this kind of mind blowing salvation share the symptoms of the heroin and the crack addict. Both realise that they have been hooked but have no desire to escape from the power that has gradually taken over their lives. Indeed, they both look for hope for the future in a never-ending supply of their own particular drug.

Nick White

Holy Smoke (2011)

The Halo Halo! column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1933 the Nazis attempted to obliterate what they saw as anti-German thinking with a book burning campaign. Fortunately ideas are not so easily killed off and book burning as a form of censorship was abandoned. Or so we thought. Then earlier this year along came the wacky Florida pastor, Terry Jones, who decided that the thoughts of a non-existent god in the Koran were a threat to the thoughts of his own non-existent god – and rectified the situation by burning the Koran.

Now another Christian preacher in Wales, the Rev Geraint ap Iorwerth, has been at it too. In a novel twist though he’s not been burning the Koran, or even the works of Marx and Engels. He’s been cutting out and burning the bits of the bible that he doesn’t like.

It’s true there is some nasty stuff in the King James bible. Particularly those bits justifying mass murder and slavery, and advising on the treatment of women. The Rev ap Iorwerth’s boss, however, the Bishop of Bangor, who presumably believes that God knows what he is talking about, is not impressed with the good Reverend‘s actions. “It’s not given to us to pick and choose. Sometimes the most challenging parts are those we need to wrestle with most”.

Well, good luck with that Bishop. We don’t have room for many suggestions, but how about getting stuck into the following. God’s view on genocide for example. Despite telling us “Thou shalt not kill” his instructions on how to deal with the Amalakites was “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (1 Samuel. 15. 3).

His instructions on how to deal with ‘prophets and dreamers’ of other gods. “Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.” (Deuteronomy 13. 8-9).

God’s advice on purchasing slaves. “Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever”. (Leviticus 25.44-46).

And what to do if a woman is not a virgin when she marries. “Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.” (Deuteronomy 22.21).

So much for a loving God. The Rev ap Iorwerth must have had one hell of a bonfire.

Nick White

Letter: Is there life before death? (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is there life before death?

Dear Editors,

I read “A Socialist reads the Koran” in the December issue and I endorse all you have to say on the matter of religion. I do, however, think that the adamant assertion that there is, and can be, no form of afterlife is open to question. Socialists may of course be absolutely right in saying this, but the fact is we really don’t know!

I am inclined to think that the religious hardline adopted by the Socialist Party regarding membership is not in their best interests, and that membership numbers would increase if this was not so. If an applicant for membership can satisfy on his, or her, understanding of socialism, does not adhere to any particular religious dogma, but, at the same time, has a personal faith in a God and an afterlife, then it seems to me to be short-sighted not to admit the candidate.

George Pearson, 

London SW20

Reply: 

We don’t recall saying that there can be no afterlife, only that those who make this claim have not produced any credible evidence to back it up. A Nobel Prize for biology awaits the scientist who does, but so far none has; in fact, in the light of repeated past failures very few think that it is a line of research worth continuing to pursue. So, for the time being, we can only conclude that when we die, we die and that’s that; our brains cease to function and so our minds disappear while our bodies decompose and are recycled in nature to push up daisies; apart from that all that remains is a memory of us in the minds of those who knew us. We suspect that most people accept this even if many are not prepared to admit this openly as it is not very comforting, but it is an added reason to concentrate on making the only life that we definitely know we’ve got as good as possible (by providing a socialist framework for it).

An applicant who said “I don’t really know” would not be treated the same as one who asserted that “there is an afterlife”. The former, though perhaps overcautious, has not crossed the line between a scientific materialist approach and an irrational belief, as the latter has.

Editors

A Socialist reads the Koran (2001)

Book Review from the December 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apparently there’s been a run on the Koran. Everybody, including Tony Blair, seems to have been reading it. So what does it say? Like the Bible it’s a boring but revealing read.

Unlike Jesus, for whose existence there is no historical evidence, Mohamet actually existed, some 1400 years ago in what is now Saudi Arabia. His claim was that the words of the Koran were dictated to him by the angel Gabriel on behalf of the god Allah (the Zeus of the pre-Mohametan Arab pantheon). Of course they weren’t, since neither the angel Gabriel nor Allah exist; they are mythological figures. So Mohamet was either making it up or hallucinating.

Religions have two alternative ways of ensuring compliance with their precepts in the interest of the dominant class, what might be called the Eastern and the Western ways.

Eastern religions go in for the doctrine of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls. What sort of bodily life you have after this one depends on how you behave this time. If you are bad, in your next life you’ll be a worm, handicapped or a member of a lower caste. If you are good, you can expect a better life, for instance, to move up a caste or not be born blind or crippled.

At least this gives people more than one chance. In the Western version you just get the one. If you blow it and are bad, you go to Hell—for ever. If you are good, you go to Heaven for eternity. This of course is what the Christians teach. So do the Mohammedans.

Like Christianity, the Koran teaches that life down here is not all that important; it’s only temporary. Far more important is the life to come:

[3:185] Every person tastes death, then you receive your recompense on the Day of Resurrection. Whoever misses Hell, barely, and makes it to Paradise, has attained a great triumph. The life of this world is no more than an illusion.

[6:32] The life of this world is no more than illusion and vanity, while the abode of the Hereafter is far better for the righteous. Do you not understand?!

[9:38] O you who believe, when you are told, “Mobilize in the cause of God,” why do you become heavily attached to the ground? Have you chosen this worldly life in place of the Hereafter? The materials of this world, compared to the Hereafter, are nil.

[40:39] “O my people, this first life is a temporary illusion, while the Hereafter is the eternal abode.”

This is one of the reasons why Socialists oppose religion. It leads people to accept things down here as they are, since any suffering is seen as only going to be temporary and as nothing compared to eternity. Socialists insist that “the life of this world” is not an illusion; it is the only life we are going to get and so we should direct all our efforts to making it the best possible.

Mohamet also inherited from Christianity the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. To anyone thinking about this seriously, this is an absurd proposition. And so it seemed to many of those who heard Mohamet preaching. He records their (eminently reasonable) reactions:

[6:29] They say (subconsciously), “We live only this life; we will not be resurrected.”

[23:37] “We only live this life – we live and die – and we will never be resurrected.”

[23:38] “He is just a man who fabricated lies and attributed them to God. We will never believe him.”

[44:34] The present generations say,

[44:35] “We only die the first death; we will never be resurrected!”

This is how Socialists would have reacted, and do react when we hear the same nonsense about the resurrection of the dead today. The Koran tells us what will happen (or rather what devout Mohammedans would like to happen) to us for this:

[13:5] If you ever wonder, the real wonder is their saying: “After we turn into dust, do we get recreated anew?” These are the ones who have disbelieved in their Lord. These are the ones who have incurred shackles around their necks. These are the ones who have incurred Hell, wherein they abide forever.

[17:97] Whomever God guides is the truly guided one. And whomever He sends astray, you will never find for them any lords and masters beside Him. We will summon them on the Day of Resurrection forcibly; blind, dumb, and deaf. Their destination is Hell; whenever it cools down, we will increase their fire.

[17:98] Such is their just retribution, since they rejected our revelations. They said, “After we turn into bones and fragments, do we get resurrected into a new creation?”

Of course ordinary Mohammedans don’t really believe in everything in the Koran any more than Christians do everything in the bible, as they both show by their everyday, materialist practice which they share with the rest of us who are not religious of giving priority to “the life of this world”. It’s only the priests that do. In putting forward the views they do about what life “down here” should be like—for instance, in proposing that the so-called sharia law should be adopted—they have entered the political fray with a reformist political programme. We therefore oppose them in the same way that we oppose all other reformist political parties and groups.

The Mohammedan priests call their religion “islam” which means “submission” and their followers “muslims”, i.e. those who submit. As the names of religions go—catholic, orthodox, protestant—this is by far the worst, but at least it is honest in bringing out the essence of all religions: humans attributing their potential collective power to a figment of their imagination which they then bow down to and worship. Just as Mohammedans prostrate themselves before their god saying “Allah is Great”, so Christians kneel before theirs singing “Oh God, How Great Thou Art”. What in fact both are saying is “How Weak We Are”. Religion is the ultimate in human self-denigration and self-abasement. Which is why Socialists reject it entirely. Humans are not weak. We can change the world to make life here better, much better.

Adam Buick

Voice From The Back: Land of the Free? (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Land of the Free?

The following report from Washington paints a dreadful picture of modern capitalism. “In the world’s biggest economy, one in eight Americans and almost one in four blacks lived in poverty last year, the US Census Bureau said on Tuesday, releasing a figure almost unchanged from 2004” (Reuters, 29 August), The report went on to say: “In all, some 37 million Americans lived below the poverty line, defined as having an annual income around $10,000 (£5,300)) for an individual or $20,000 (£10,600) for a family of four.” 200 quid a week for a family of four, and they wonder why they have a crime problem?

Homeless in Britain?

The Department for Communities and Local Government announced that the number of homeless families in England had dropped to 19,430 between June and April this year, down 29 percent on the same period in 2005, but charities have queried these figures. “There are as many as 380,000 hidden homeless people, predominately single, in Britain living out of sight,” says Duncan Scrubsole, head of policy and strategy at Crisis” (Inside Housing, 15 September). Adam Sampson, the chief executive of Shelter, also queries the government’s figures. “Any drop in new cases is to be welcomed, provided this is brought about by genuine work to prevent people from losing their homes in the first place, rather than preventing them from registering to get the help they need” (Times, 19 September). Anyone taking the government figures at face value, should remember the old saying “figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.”

Fat Cat Britain

When the Labour Party came to power we were told “things can only get better” and so they have – for the super rich. “A global survey of the lists of the wealthiest people in 27 leading countries shows that Britain and Switzerland have by far the biggest communities of foreign-born super-rich in the world. Switzerland, with its reputation for banking secrecy and strict regulations, has long been regarded as a magnet for multi-millionaires. But Britain, with the special attraction of tax incentives for billionaires from overseas, is fast catching up as a new refuge for the rich” (Sunday Times, 24 September). Britain now has more billionaires per head of its population than America. Was this what members of the working class envisaged on election day when they sang “things can only get better”?

Interested in Interest?

The Koran prohibits something called riba, loosely translated as interest and this has hindered the development of capitalism. Something similar happened in medieval times when the christians banned usury, but the theologist soon found a way around that and now we have thriving banks in the Vatican. Islam theology may have taken a little longer but now they have joined the capitalist bandwagon. “Islamic banking scholars have found ways of accommodating their philosophical abhorrence of money as a commodity with the need to create financing tools. Typically, this involves converting interest into a rent or a profit share” (Times, 30 September). The Koran may hold sway in the mosque, but outside in the real world capitalism dictates.

A Fistful Of Dollars

Being homeless in Britain may be awful, but think how much worse to be sleeping rough in a Russian winter. That is a problem that does not confront the Russian billionaire Roustam Tariko to judge by this item. “At a palace in St Petersburg, which has been converted into a disco for the night by Moscow’s most fashionable party organisers, the vodka flows and a New York disco diva sings Thank You for the Music, while ballet dancers pirouette around her. … Roustam Tariko, the man picking up the $3 million (£1.6 million) tab for the party, turns to me: ‘People like you are already tired of $100,000 parties. They are nothing special for you’” (Times, 7 October). If a Moscow winter proves too severe he can always flee to his house in New York or Sardina, an escape that is impossible for the Russian homeless.

A Handful Of Pennies

It is reckoned that 1.9 million children under the age of five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases and that the means of saving their lives only cost a couple of pence. “The result, according to the World Health Organization (WHO): 3 million people a year still die from diarrhoeal complications, including 1.9 million children under the age of five, or 17% of the estimated deaths in that age group” (Time, 16 October). All that is required is a large pinch of salt and a fistful of sugar dissolved in a jug of clean water, but in the crowded cities and remote areas of the world’s poorest this has proved impossible. Capitalism breeds poverty and ignorance and makes this madness possible. The establishment of world socialism will almost immediately save these 3 million people from premature death.

Islam and Socialism (2005)

From the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialism and Islam are very close, other than on the existence of God” (George Galloway, Sunday Times, 14 August).

We’ve heard of Jesus the Socialist. Now it’s Mohammed the Socialist. What next? As the MP for Bethnal Green, elected by Muslim votes and with the help of the SWP, Galloway would say this. Even so, it is a curious statement for him, as a Catholic who claims to be a socialist, to have made, acknowledging as it does that socialists don’t accept “the existence of God”.

Since, like all religions, islam lays down precepts for organising life on Earth as well as on what to do to get to heaven (and avoid hell), is there any basis for Galloway’s claim that islam is very close to socialism if its religious side is overlooked?

The French historian and orientalist, Maxime Rodinson, who died last year and who adopted a generally Marxist-materialist approach (even though, like Galloway, entertaining some illusions about Russia), certainly didn’t think so. In his Islam and Capitalism (1966) (written to refute the view that islam was an impediment to the economic development of Muslim countries), he wrote:

“Economic activity, the search for profit, trade, and, consequently, production for the market, are looked upon with no less favour by Muslim tradition than by the Koran itself” (p. 16).

“[T]he justice advocated by the ideology of the Koran is not that which socialist thought has established as the ideal of a large section of modern society. Muhammad was not a socialist” (p. 23).

“The alleged fundamental opposition of Islam to capitalism is a myth, whether this view be put forward with good intentions or bad” (p. 155).

“[T]he notion that it is possible to use the traditional concept of property found in the Sunnah, and the relative restrictions it imposes, in order to advocate and promote a move by Muslim societies towards socialist structures . . . is utterly fantastic” (p. 175).

In a previous book (1961), Mohammed, Rodinson had provided a materialist explanation of the origins of islam. In Mohammed’s time (he was born about 571 of the present era and died in 632), the Arabian peninsula was, we can see now, in a process of transition from tribal society, which was breaking down, to a state, for which Mohammed was to be instrumental in laying the foundations.

As Rodinson described it:

“A mercantile economy was growing up in the chinks of the nomadic world. As well as barter, money transactions using dinars (gold derniers) and dirhams (silver drachmae) were becoming commonplace. The Bedouin borrowed from the rich merchants of the towns, got into debt and were sold into slavery or at any rate reduced to dependent status. The disintegration of tribal society had begun. Large and prosperous markets grew up, like the one at Ukaz, attracting foreigners as well as Arabs from every tribe. The tribal limits had been overstepped”.

Mohammed himself, although from a modest background, had become one of the wealthy merchants that had emerged, but he realised that something needed to be done to keep Arab society from completely disintegrating under the impact of the unbridled spread of money-commodity relations. His solution was to create a new Arab community welded together by a new religion that would regulate the emerging money/trading economy by imposing some obligations on the rich and some relief for the poor.

Of course as a mystic, Mohammed was not as rationally calculating as this but expressed himself in religious terms. Thus, in the koran (which he believed was dictated to him by the archangel Gabriel, but which in fact, whether he realised it or not, expressed his own thoughts), the greedy and selfish rich are denounced (it is Allah, the Zeus of the pre-islam Arabian pantheon who Mohammed makes dismiss his fellow gods as fakes, who is purportedly speaking):

“Whoso is mean and bumptious on account of his wealth,

Who denies the most excellent reward,

We shall smooth his way to ultimate misery.

His fortune shall not profit him when he falls into the abyss”

(Koran xcii, 8-11)

Rodinson describes some of the regulations that Mohammed brought in when in 627, after slaughtering the previous rulers, he became the ruler of Medina:

“There are a number of articles laying down fairly strict rules about inheritances. This was apparently necessary in the unsettled situation which resulted from the disintegration of the tribal structure. The stronger must have found it easier to lay hands on the family or tribal possessions of the weaker. The rule of the Koran guaranteed everyone his share, which was worked out in a somewhat complicated fashion. Women were allowed a share in the property. (This seems to have been the custom in Mecca, although not in Medina.). Admittedly their share was only half that of the men . . . Slavery, naturally, persisted. People were urged to treat slaves well and encourage them to gain their freedom.. . . Loans at interest or, more probably, some form of them, were forbidden. This prescription seems in practice to have been aimed chiefly at those who, in the early days of the move to Medina, refused to make loans to the needy without interest . . . But there seems to have been no intention of prohibiting the normal practices of Meccan trade.”

So what does Mohammed’s “socialism” amount to? Only certain rules to prevent the excesses of the rich from leading to the decomposition of society in 7th century Arabia, but which still accepted the basis of the money/trading economy that had emerged and was spreading. The economic precepts of the koran laid down a framework for the less disruptive functioning of such an economy, placing some obligations on the rich to help the poor while still accepting the division of society into rich and poor.

No doubt it is these limits on the unbridled and selfish accumulation and use of wealth by private individuals that is behind Galloway’s claim that “socialism and islam are very close”. But this reveals more about his conception of “socialism” than it does about islam. As a former Labour MP, he still thinks in terms of socialism being the control or regulation of capitalism in the interest of the non-rich. But that’s not socialism, but reformism. Islam is no more incompatible with this than it is with capitalism. In fact, it is very close to it, except when the religious element which gives its clerics an undue say is brought back. Socialism, properly understood as a non-monetary, non-market society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, and islam have nothing in common.

Adam Buick

Islam and banking (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Koran—which is supposed to be the literal word of God as dictated to Mohamet by the Archangel Gabriel — bans the taking of interest. Or at least that is how it is being interpreted by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Persia and by the Moslem fundamentalists who advise the military dictator of Pakistan, General Zia.

The trick of course is in the definition of interest. It can be admitted that, from the point of view of economic theory, there are two kinds of interest, depending on what the loan is granted for: consumption or production. Before capitalism most loans were not investments in production but were to people to spend on consumption, the luxuries of the rich or the necessities of the poor as the case may be. When such loans are made to the poor the moneylender can exploit his client’s dire need to extract a very high rate of interest and can eventually reduce him to a state of virtual slavery, as occurred on numerous occasions in pre-capitalist times. Mohamet wrote the Koran, of course, well before capitalism evolved, about 1300 years ago in what is now Saudi Arabia and its ban on interest was designed to prevent the social structure of the then tribal society being undermined by debt-slavery.

Interest under capitalism is something different. It is a share in the profits extracted from the exploitation of wage-labour. The lender loans his money to an entrepreneur who invests it in production and who pays the interest out of the profits he makes. This means that under capitalism there is a limit to the rate of interest: it cannot be greater than the rate of profit.

Banks are specialised financial institutions which gather together money which people want to lend and pass it on to capitalists to invest in production. They realise their profits out of the difference between the rates of interest they pay their depositors and the rates of interest they charge their customers. Banks play an important intermediary role under capitalism and without them the accumulation of capital out of profits — which is the be-all and end-all of capitalism — would proceed, and would have proceeded, at a much slower pace.

Capitalism has only been going for about two hundred or so years but it has now spread all over the world, including Moslem countries. In such countries too it finds banks essential as financial intermediaries channelling money for productive investment; and of course banks, charging and taking interest, exist in all Moslem countries including both Khomeini’s Persia and Zia's Pakistan.

Moslem theologians have overcome this problem by interpreting the Koran’s ban on interest to apply only to the taking and paying of amounts of interest fixed in advance. From here on it is easy: the interest, both that paid to depositors and that charged to borrowers, comes to be called “a share in profits”. This is how the Amman correspondent of the Financial Times (21/3/79) describes the operation of the Jordan Islamic Bank:

  A depositor places his money in a savings account in an Islamic bank without being guaranteed any fixed return every year. Instead he is promised a share of the profits of the projects the bank is financing. When the bank lends money to finance a new industrial plant, the borrower does not pay a fixed interest rate every year, but rather promises to give the bank a share of the profits the plant generates after it starts production. If the plant makes a quick and large profit, the bank and the depositors share in the bonanza. If the plant makes only a small profit, they get less. The bank always maintains a reserve fund from which it will pay its depositors and shareholders a dividend during any particularly unprofitable years.

Another way out is, instead of demanding a share of the borrower’s profits, to charge him a “commission” or “fee” for arranging the loan.

Actually, this solution — of calling “interest” a “share in profits”— conforms very well with the nature of interest under capitalism which, as we saw, is precisely a share of profits — though it is another matter whether the foregoing of the administrative convenience of paying fixed interest just to respect the letter of the Koran is a rational banking practice.

What is interesting in this is the confirmation it brings of the materialist conception of history that the ideology of a particular society its morality, its religion,—is a reflection of its economic basis and changes as that basis does. As capitalism has come to Moslem countries so the Koran's ban on interest has been re-interpreted so as to fit in with the system's need for the financial intermediaries that are banks.

There is a precedent for this. The Bible too used to ban interest and this had to be changed when capitalism evolved in Christian countries. It seems, according to R.H.Tawney in his Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, that by the end of the Middle Ages the Christian theologians had reached exactly the same conclusions as today’s Moslem theologians — that anything goes except the giving and taking of payments fixed in advance (indeed there would seem to be one or two subtleties here that may not yet have occurred to the Ayatollah Khomeini):

   No man, again, may charge money for a loan. He may, of course, take the profits of partnership, provided that he takes the partner’s risks. He may buy a rent-charge; for the fruits of the earth are produced by nature, not wrung from man. He may demand compensation — interesse — if he is not repaid the principal at a time stipulated. He may ask payment corresponding to any loss he incurs or gain he foregoes. He may purchase an annuity, for the payment is contingent and speculative, not certain . . .What remained to the end unlawful was that which appears in modern economic text-books as ‘pure interest’ — interest as a fixed payment stipulated in advance for a loan of money or wares without risk to the lender. . .The essence of usury was that it was certain, and that, whether the borrower gained or lost, the usurer took his pound of flesh. Medieval opinion, which has no objection to rent or profits, provided that they are reasonable — for is not everyone in a small way a profit-maker? — has no mercy for the debenture holder. His crime is that he takes a payment for money which is fixed and certain, and such a payment is usury. (Pelican edition, pp 54-5).

How long will it be before the Archangel Gabriel appears again to dictate an amendment to the Koran permitting fixed interest payments?

Adam Buick

Defending the indefensible (2015)

The Halo Halo! column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Lord of the Isles, etc. etc. is obviously a man with a liking for job titles, and his collection so far is only overshadowed by the collection of military medals and uniforms he wears to go with them. And, despite his less than impressive record of any actual employment so far he’s looking forward to getting a new one.

‘Defender of faith’ he wants to be known as rather than ‘Defender of the faith’ when the family business, consisting of travelling around the world waving at the natives, is finally handed to him. And this makes perfect sense. The current title seems to imply that there’s only one faith that needs defending, whereas of course, they’re all at each other’s throats, and so need defending from each other. There’s also the fact that he and his chums who collectively own the planet don’t give a sod which faith the proles go for, as long as they can be kept in a state of obedient, religious stupor by believing in one of them.

In the good old days, of course, the gods were omnipotent and could easily defend themselves. Thor had a ruddy great hammer to show who was boss and Zeus was known for hurling thunderbolts at anyone who crossed his path. But now, it seems, they need a mortal to consult with and advise them on the defence of their various faiths. And Charlie, the man who has devoted so much of his life to talking to plants and studying quack herbal remedies is apparently uniquely qualified to do it.

And now someone is taking his wish to become ‘defender of faith’ to all the gods seriously. Lord Harries, a former Bishop of Oxford, and a ‘leading CofE liberal thinker’ according to the Daily Mail (28 November) suggests that Charles’s coronation service should be opened with a reading from the Koran. Unsurprisingly, many of his colleagues strongly disagree.

In any event, one passage it may be wise to avoid will be Surah 5 verse 51: ‘O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is one of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk’.

Lord Harries is sure, however, that it would be ‘a creative act of accommodation’ and make Muslims feel ‘embraced’ by the nation. Whether some of the more extreme Islamists of Isis, for example, who want an Islamic state and prefer to deal with those of a different persuasion by beheading them feel the need to be ‘embraced’ or have their faith ‘defended’ by the new King Charlie of the UK is another matter.

A report on the World Bulletin website (11 November) suggests that in Egypt, at least, panicking Moslems and Christians are being forced to join forces to fight what they see as a new danger: a ‘growing trend of atheism’ which has ‘alarmed the country’s religious institutions’. It seems that since the 2011 uprising many young Egyptians have begun to openly declare their atheist views.

Strange, isn’t it, that after being divided for centuries by their religions it’s the rejection of religion that’s getting them together? Funny old world isn’t it? Perhaps now that they’ve found this new understanding they can tell us which god is the real one, and which the imposter.

NW

Halo Halo!: Answers from Genesis (and the Koran) (2016)

The Halo Halo! Column from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The difference between philosophy and religion, as someone once pointed out, is that philosophy is questions which may never be answered, and religion is answers which may never be questioned. And the answers we get from some religionists are staggering.

Ken Ham, for example, an ex-science teacher (thank goodness for the ‘ex’) and now the president of Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian outfit, teaches that the Book of Genesis should be taken as historical fact, that the universe is no more than about 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs once co-existed with genetically modern humans. His smart-arse answer to anyone who disagrees with his views on evolution and the origin of life is ‘were you there?’(He, presumably, was there when God was creating the universe, Eve was in the Garden of Eden sharing an apple with the serpent and Adam was riding around, Fred Flintstone style, on his dinosaur).

He recently ruffled a few feathers on the Richard Dawkins Foundation website (where they don’t suffer religious fools gladly) with a Facebook post describing the teaching of science to children as a form of child abuse. Teaching children that they are sinners, and liable to an eternity of pain and hellfire unless they live their lives in accordance with Mr Ham’s fantasies is, apparently, not abusive.

It is not only Christians whose lives need to be governed by ancient books of nightmares of course. The Newsweek website recently reported that a powerful Pakistani religious body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam (yes, you read that correctly – they have a council of mullahs to make sure their laws meet Allah’s requirements) declared a new law that criminalises violence against women to be ‘un-Islamic’.

The new act passed by the Province of Punjab, where in 2013 more than 5,800 cases of violence against women were reported, gives legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence and calls for the creation of an abuse reporting hot-line.

In the past this religious council has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases, supported a law which required women alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court, and blocked a bill to impose harsher penalties for marrying off 8 or 9 year-old girls, so Allah’s hardly going to like this one is he?

‘This whole law is wrong’ argued one confused old cleric, spouting passages from the Koran to back up his point. And another complained, bitterly ‘This law makes a man insecure’. It’s political correctness gone mad, obviously, a total lack of common sense. But no doubt they’ll be able to live with it. They’ve still got that passage in the Koran that allows a man to beat his wife when necessary.

NW