Last week saw the tenth anniversary of the Afghan war. Although I admit that there have been many mistakes by the Anglo-American coalition, one thing that I am troubled with is the implicit(if not explicit) support for the Taliban by sections of the far Left, either ignoring or downplaying its decidedly reactionary stance on women's rights and Church(or should I say mosque?)/State relations as well as gays(shades of the Stalinist trope that homosexuality was a"bourgeious perversion" a la Cuba), presumably on the grounds that anybody who for whatever reason opposes the West politically or militarily was de facto"progressive".
Anyone who drew attention to this, in questioning calls for an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan by Western forces( which would almost certainly lead to the Taliban's return to power, with all that implies for Afghanistan's girls and women, gays, and freethinkers of both sexes), is preumably denounced as an "Islamophobe" and loftily told that "we must impose our ideas of gender equality on a society that does not wish it" or the trope so old that it can apply for its own Freedom Pass and Social Security benefits"- "it would be racist/ imperialist/Islamophobic to judge the Taliban by our standards- it's their culture!"
Well, first of all, this argument that we must "respect" the Taliban's illiberal views on gender or gays is BALONEY( to use the politest phrase available in a family site like this). If we were to take a time machine and arrive in either: pre-Civil War or Jim Crow Deep South of the US( ie during slavery or segregation), Stalin's Soviet Union or apartheid era South Africa, would those who argue that we should "respect" the views of a bunch of people who if they were evangelical Protestants,, traditionalist( ie opposed to the reforms of Vatican Council II, pace Mel Gibson and his father Hutton) Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox Church, would be correctly excoriated as the very model of reaction in its most literal sense as would anybody who blithely claimed, we must "respect" the culture of slaveowners/segregationists, Stalinists or apartheid minded Afrikaners(much of the demands by an odd couple of otherwise decidedly secular- at least when it came to other faiths such as Roman Catholicism- "trendy lefties" and their new BFFs in "Islamists" that we should "respect"( ie not print or say anything critical of
Islam in theory or practice) stems from this decidedly ludicrous assertion. My response is that if you want sacred cows, then emigrate to the Indian subcontinent!
Secondly, the red herring of "culture"( I'm beginning to see why Hermann Goering once quipped that"whenever I hear the word "culture", I reach for my revolver!"). Culture is ( or in its healthy state) NOT meant to be some kind of static entity, unchanging and unchangeable ( what I call the "jam jar" concept of culture, preserved in aspic or formadelhyde). Western societies once included such practices as slavery/segregation, the burning of alleged witches, fox hunting, bear/badger baiting
and the beating of wives by husbands, provided of course the impliment was no thicker than a husband's thumb( hence the phrase "rule of thumb) proscription of homosexuality and the death penalty( the last execution took place in 1964 on the mainland UK, a year before the abolition of capital punishment)), ALL of these defended in their time as "cultural", but all ultimately deemed to be out of keeping with the mores of a civilized society. How ironic that the Left(and its "jihadist" allies) should stoop to using an argument already discredited by the Right.
Last week, the Principlaity of Lichtenstein defeated by a narrow margin attempts to liberalize abortion laws(the Principality is of course largely Roman Catholic so this is hardly surprising). Leftists and liberals would argue that these laws should be liberalized anyway(irrespective of the religious views and beliefs of many Lichtensteiners, or Poles and Nicaraguans, who have faced and-correctly in my view-rejected demands from Amnesty International or Planned Parenthood that they amend their laws on this issue as they reflect the spiritual beliefs of a vast majority of its citizens), but when it comes to Islam, the "roaring lion of Western secularism" becomes what the Victorians termed aptly a"wee, timorious beastie", forever tugging its forelock!
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