In a statement that surprised those of us who know him as a secularist opposed to the intrusion of religion into politics, Peter Tatchell of Outrage! said yesterday: “While I normally have little sympathy for Islam, the Muslim Association of Britain has taken a courageous, defiant stand against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.”
Outrage! press release, 31 March 2005
OK, I’m having you on. That isn’t what Tatchell said. It was the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo he was applauding. But I was trying to make a serious point, about the contradictions in Tatchell’s attitude towards religion.
After the Pope’s death, Tatchell was quoted as saying: “Millions of children in developing countries are orphans, having lost their parents to Aids because of the Pope’s anti-condom dogma. Pope John Paul II waged a ceaseless war against the human rights of women and gay people, opposing the right of women to control their own fertility, blocking women’s equality in the church and endorsing state-sponsored discrimination against lesbians and gay men.” (Daily Telegraph, 3 April 2005)
I don’t have precise details of the positions taken by Pius Ncube, Archbishop of Bulawayo, on these issues, but it seems highly unlikely that he would disagree with his late leader, given that he shares the latter’s conservative, anti-liberal approach to Catholicism. As Ncube told the Tablet in an interview last year:
“There is too much humanism coming in after the [Second] Vatican Council. Before then, Catholics were very, very convinced of their faith. There was no compromise. It was either/or. As a child in school the first thing was, you went to Mass, for about 45 minutes from 7.30, after which we went for lessons. Every day the first lesson was catechism. So, do this five days a week, and after a year or two you really knew what you believed.” (Tablet, 31 July 2004)
Yet Tatchell is quite prepared to block with this Catholic conservative in a campaign against the Zimbabwean government, stating: “While I normally have little sympathy for the Catholic Church, the Archbishop of Bulawayo has taken a courageous, defiant stand against Mugabe.”
On the other hand, when it comes to campaigning with the Muslim Association of Britain against the Iraq war or with Yusuf al-Qaradawi against state bans on the Islamic headscarf, Tatchell claims that this is wrong in principle and that it is only permissible to campaign alongside those he terms “liberal” Muslims. Indeed, he condemns the left for making “alliances with rightwingers like Qaradawi and the MAB”.
If you want an example of leftist, secular Islamophobia in practice, and the hypocrisy, double-think and double-talk it involves, just take a look at the political record of Peter Tatchell.