Islamophobia, homophobia and the moral imagination

The disingenuous rhetoric of ‘phobias’ impoverishes both moral and political thought

The political use of the suffix ‘phobia’ is not new. I was recently struck by a reference to no less a figure than John Stuart Mill accusing the British government of 1836 of suffering from ‘Russophobia’. The same affliction is now regularly diagnosed by Vladimir Putin. The term xenophobia has also been in use since the late 19^th century and is still going strong. But – less comfortably for Putin – the conceptual touchstone for politicised phobias in our time is surely ‘homophobia’. And it has always been a troublesome one.

In casting anti-gay feeling as an irrational fear, ‘homophobia’ makes it more personal than moral or ideological. And it has never quite shaken off the associated nudge and wink that imply those who fear homosexuality most are probably struggling with their own sexuality. That’s why it so often feels like a playground insult in disguise.

The judo-like character of the charge is also apparent in a term like transphobia. ‘You think trans women are weird and scary; you’re weird and scary!’ The implication is that the object of whatever ‘phobia’ is invoked is completely innocuous. If you have a problem with it, it’s your problem. There’s something wrong with you. But you do not have to fear or hate individuals who identify as the opposite sex to worry about – and, yes, to fear – the cultural project being pursued in their name. (Nor do you have to endorse everything said or done in opposition to it.)

The same is true of political Islam, or Islamism, and even some not-so-political aspects of Islam itself. Critics often point out that the term Islamophobia was deliberately coined by Islamists to stigmatise criticism of Islam, or even of Islamism. But it is just as significant that the term quickly gained currency in resolutely secular circles.

Indeed, the real potency of the term in Western countries derives from a distinctly secular, liberal assumption that is not even shared by Islamists. Namely, the idea that religion does not or should not matter. For secular liberals – as opposed to the more dogmatic secularists who see religion in any form as a problem – religion is like skin colour or sexual preference. Taking against someone because of his religion is as wrong, and indeed as absurd, as racial prejudice. As benighted as judging a woman because she loves another woman.

The taming of religion

It should be acknowledged that this way of thinking has a sound provenance in the rejection of historic sectarianism. When I was growing up in Glasgow in the 1980s, for example, the notorious divide between Catholics and Protestants was already more honoured in the breach than the observance. Yes, there were separate Catholic schools, a religiously inflected football rivalry and no doubt a degree of genuine bigotry, but the increasingly mainstream view was that it was all embarrassing nonsense. ‘Mixed marriages’ were and are completely normal and accepted.

This was a continuation of a much wider European trend going back centuries. Religious wars gave way not so much to the abandonment of religion – certainly not at first – as to its taming. In Britain, the religiously inflected civil wars of the 17^th century gave way to a settlement that established a form of Protestantism (or arguably two forms) while allowing Nonconformism to flourish and also paving the way for Catholic and Jewish emancipation; and eventually the acceptance even of atheism. By the end of the 20^th century, worrying about people’s religion was distinctly retro, even uncouth.

It is helpful to distinguish here between two different things. The uncoupling of religion from political citizenship made it possible to extend full civil equality to people of all faiths and none. While it might be tempting to see the marginalisation of faith as part of the same process, that aspect of ‘secularisation’ really has to be accounted for in its own terms. As I argued in a previous essay, ‘The religious freedom achieved, albeit imperfectly, in liberal modernity is what gives genuine faith a fighting chance amid the tumult of secular as well as religious dogmas’.

It also means people are free – for whatever reason – to abandon religion altogether. Mixed marriages in the west of Scotland and elsewhere are an index of declining faith as much as declining sectarianism. Because a devout Christian of any denomination will generally seek a spouse who shares his or her faith – whether by birth or conversion – without wishing to deprive those of other faiths or none of full civil rights. The same goes for devout Jews, Hindus and Muslims. Religious freedom and civil equality include the right to private discrimination.

The persistence of difference

Of course, legally, there is nothing stopping people from discriminating in their private lives on the basis of race either. But the two things are not morally equivalent. Faith, like other, often implicit philosophical beliefs, shapes our lives in ways that race does not, or should not. It is more like political affiliation than skin colour. Commentators sometimes lament reports that increasing numbers of people would not date or marry anyone on the other side of the political divide. But is this so strange or objectionable? Certainly, we should make an effort to engage with and understand people who see the world very differently. But do we have to share a bed with them? (Perhaps the answer says as much about our attitude to sex and relationships as it does about our attitude to politics.)

In practice, it can be hard to disentangle religion from ethnicity and other factors like caste. We should not seek to make windows into men’s or women’s hearts (or even those of their parents, provided there is no coercion). But the desire for a soulmate who shares our beliefs about the soul is entirely reasonable, civilised and compatible with a pluralist society. Faith or the lack of it will also legitimately affect our career choices, leisure activities and even how we vote. So far, so little to be phobic about.

Nevertheless, religion also shapes social and political attitudes in ways that are not reasonable, civilised or compatible with a pluralist society. Islam-ism is the most obvious contemporary example of a reactionary tendency arising from religion. In some forms, it is explicitly opposed to religious freedom, gender equality, democracy and Western civilisation tout court, and inspires murderous violence. Other religions also have their reactionary tendencies, but right now at least these are much less influential and certainly less deadly. In any case, it is no more irrational (phobic) to fear violent reaction associated with religion than any other kind.

The illusion of consensus

All this is to say that – in both benign and malign ways – religion matters. It is not like skin colour. And whether it is like sexuality or not depends in part on your moral and religious beliefs. This is where things get complicated. Unthinking ‘progressives’ merrily denounce homophobia and Islamophobia in the same breath, not noticing (or pretending not to notice) the tension. Conversely, for many critics of Islam – and not just Islamism – the religion’s teachings about homosexuality are a key point of contention. And yet, those teachings are not so different from those of traditional Christianity.

Progressives who vocally condemn Christian homophobia are often more reticent when it comes to the Muslim variety. Conservatives face a different dilemma: do they condemn Christian as well as Muslim homophobia? One reasonable response is that the former tends not, today, to involve coercion or violence. It’s one thing to disapprove of homosexuality; quite another to criminalise it as in much of the Muslim world, to persecute gay people and even kill them for their sexuality. It is the latter that is the issue, at least for those willing to confront it, not necessarily the religious objection to homosexuality as such.

Paradoxically, this approach is far more consistent with the idea of a pluralist – even ‘multicultural’ – society than the blanket anathematisation of homophobia favoured by the progressives who tend to champion multiculturalism. It also implies a different understanding of what has happened in the West since the 1960s.

The charge of homophobia – and perhaps transphobia even more so – rests on a progressivist narrative according to which all decent people now agree on these things. To demur is to reveal oneself as a bigot, an omniphobe. In the words of former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, ‘just as they're transphobic you'll also find that they're deeply misogynist, often homophobic, possibly some of them racist as well’. Only the comprehensively deplorable disagree with any part of the progressive package. But this is an illusion.

It's not simply that conspicuously non-rabid religious conservatives continue to disapprove of homosexuality, nor that they show few signs of dying out or changing their minds. More importantly, even those who broadly affirm the liberalisation of gender and sexual norms since the 1960s, including feminism and gay rights, do not necessarily sign up to everything others think are implied by those terms.

The enduring value of norms

Part of the problem with the term homophobia is the implication that, for us upstanding non-homophobes, the whole issue of sexuality, and indeed sexual morality more generally, has been settled. There is nothing to discuss. So, on to the next thing – trans rights – with the assurance that to be transphobic will soon be as unacceptable as to be homophobic. Those who object to trans rights today are just like those who opposed gay rights yesterday. On the wrong side of history.

Not so fast. At least two different things have happened since the 1960s. One is that most people in the West have come to see homosexuality as a normal variation in human sexuality, one that can be more or less accommodated within traditional norms. Another is that a radical minority came to reject the very idea of traditional norms as inherently oppressive. The rhetorical power of the charge of ‘homophobia’ rests on the first development, but is used much more promiscuously.

The trans issue can be – or could once have been – understood under that first paradigm to some extent. The now quaint-sounding idea of the ‘sex change operation’ strained at its boundaries, attributing individuals with the ability to switch sexes while apparently leaving the categories intact. But the now prevalent idea of multiple genders floating free of biology and anatomy, with pregnant men, bearded women and otherkin, clearly belongs to the second paradigm. Similarly, old-fashioned androgyny has given way to a new non-binary identity that rejects rather than loosening gender norms. The idea that questioning any of this amounts to ‘homophobia’ is unsustainable.

It is worth adding that the same norm-defying ideology deems it unacceptable to condemn pornography or prostitution as immoral. That’s ‘kink shaming’, ‘slut shaming’ and, inevitably, ‘whorephobia’.

Pathologising judgement

What all this has in common with Islamophobia is the insistence that, like religion, someone’s gender identity and sexual proclivities do not or should not matter to anyone else. It is bad manners to question them. And so it is. ‘Is your version of Islam compatible with liberal democracy?’ It’s an uncomfortable question, but it’s obvious that radically politicised versions pose an ideological challenge that must be confronted. It is less obvious that even the most outlandish gender presentation is a threat to Western civilisation. To a great extent, we can afford to live and let live. And yet.

We need not pretend to be indifferent. Some ways of life are surely more compatible with human flourishing than others. To give the matter a liberal spin, being in a faithful same-sex partnership is surely better than using prostitutes, or working as one, whatever your sexuality. And, even suspending judgement on whether gender transition is the best outcome for some, it is surely better to reconcile oneself to one’s biological sex if at all possible. Social norms can be stifling, which is why flexibility and tolerance are so important. But they also encapsulate inherited wisdom and common sense. It is wrong to tell young people they can simply change their bodies to match the gender that feels right, and that others will see and accept them as they wish to be seen and accepted.

There is no point in me protesting that the preceding paragraph is not ‘transphobic’ (and ‘whorephobic’). Like ‘Islamophobia’, the term is deliberately used to pathologise dissent from a particular ideology, even when that dissent takes the form of affirming traditional norms. We should not abuse or persecute anyone because of their race, religion or sexuality or their feelings about gender. But nor should we allow a playground insult disguised as a diagnosis to stifle dissent from false and harmful ideologies. Not to mention Vladimir bloody Putin.

Readers with an interest in sexual and wider morality might be interested in Gehenna: a novel of Hell and Earth, in which I explore the idea of sin through fiction, including the question of why the sodomites are consigned to Dante’s Hell. See also this associated essay.