[lit-ideas] Re: Religion & Public Reason
- From: Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:31:19 +0700
Eric wrote:
"The Cheney Doctrine concerns loose nukes or loose bioweapons, where
the destructive potential of their use -- even at 1 percent chance --
is civilization-ending, and consequently an unacceptable risk. Not
entirely apropos."
What I said with regards to the security argument in support of
banning the niqab: "Here we approach something like the Cheney
doctrine". First, with an analogy, the fact that the two things being
compared are not exactly alike is not an argument against the analogy.
The whole point of an analogy is that the two are different with some
aspect of similarity. So, Eric is right that the Cheney Doctrine was
offered in the context of a discussion on nuclear and biological
weapons. My argument turns however on what I perceive to be a
similarity, namely, the claim that the possibility of a future
security threat is best dealt with by a present day response rather
than by analysis.
But, if I may be presumptuous, Eric might argue that the similarity
works only if the threat is to scale. There is, Eric might argue, an
important difference between the threat of a suicide bomber with an
explosive vest under a niqab and a rogue country or terrorist
organization with nukes. However, I think this imagined response
misses the point. As I claimed before, the rhetoric surrounding the
push for a ban is not focused on the niqab as a delivery system for an
explosive vest, but rather it is focused on the religious extremism
for which the niqab is the proxy. In this respect, the article Ed
Farrell linked to in the National Review is useful in that it attempts
to lay out a connection between the practice of wearing the niqab and
the threat Islamic extremists pose to Western Civilization. More
evidence of this connection lies in the punishment the French have
proposed, namely classes on French culture. In other words, the
French see the practice of wearing the niqab as a threat to the very
nature of French society. Furthermore, there has been a decided shift
in the rhetoric surrounding Islam in the U.S. so that, for many
Americans, Islam itself is a threat to the U.S. and all the values it
supposedly represents. If, as I am suggesting, the rhetoric that
surrounds discussions of the threat of the niqab takes the niqab as a
proxy for Islamic extremism or even Islam itself, and that this
extremism is understood as a threat to Western civilization, then my
analogy holds. This construed threat of Islamic extremism is to
scale, or perhaps even greater, with the threat of a loose nuke.
In short, I stand by my analogy. Those arguing for a ban on the
practice of the niqab adopt a rhetoric that understands this practice
as a threat to Western civilization. For this reason, so the argument
goes, the risks require a response, the banning of the niqab, rather
than analysis, that is the evaluation of facts and evidence for a
specific threat. Here, the banning of the niqab is a proxy for the
banning of Islamic extremism, or perhaps Islam itself. And to
summarize my argument, I think this approach both undermines liberal
democratic practices and reduces the effectiveness of the response to
actual security threats. Instead, the most effective approach is for
liberal democratic governments to avoid interfering in religious
matters but rather focus on the rule of law. In this way, liberal
democratic governments ensure the right to religious freedom while
also ensuring the legal and security structures that make the practice
of such freedoms possible.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Indonesia
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