I became a humanist last year, but am still not
sure what that means. I have noticed no changes in myself so far. There is a tendency
to define humanism in terms of what it is not, for example: not an organised
religion, no belief in the supernatural, not racist, not extremist, etc. Friday
night, at a humanist lecture on the jihadist mentality, the speaker tried to
redefine humanism; I believe his intention was to reach out towards religious
moderates and hence isolate the crazies.
His name is Roger Griffin, he’s an historian with a
specialism in Nazism which he has now extended to terrorism. He began by
describing the modern world’s tendency to rob people of meaning in their lives,
particularly the erosion of unquestioning belief (in religion, government, law,
morality, etc). This, he said, leaves a hole which can, on the one hand, be
filled by an addiction to shopping, watching programmes like the X Factor or
gardening, or, on the other hand, by creativity in art, music, theatre or
whatever. But for some this is not enough, their search for meaning becomes
obsessive and idealistic. In the worst cases they latch on to some extreme idea
(e.g. distorted Islam) and become so strongly addicted to that idea that they
are willing to kill and be killed for it: hence the Twin Towers, etc.
I’m sure that Roger would regard this as a vast
over simplification of what he said, but that’s it in essence. He gave us many
examples of terrorists and their bizarre creeds including Brusthom Ziamani, the
19 year old arrested in London carrying a flag of Islam, a hammer and a knife
with the express intention of beheading a soldier. This man was brought up as a
Jehovah’s Witness and converted to Islam in his teens. In London, he joined a
group of followers of some radical Muslim cleric. His ex-girlfriend said that, “he wanted to
die a martyr and do things to get to heaven and to please god”.
That night the audience were clamouring for
solutions to the ghastly problems of extremism rather than reasons for it. The
speaker’s response was that those who have been turned can be unturned - given
the right treatment. He referred to the Danish solution in which radicals
returning from ISIS in Syria are treated kindly, rather than being imprisoned
as they are here. They are re-educated and once converted released to become educators
themselves, thus creating people with the ability to reach out to the
terrorists groups that they themselves once belonged to and to reason with
them. This was treated with some scepticism, but what really got the assembled humanists
off their chairs was a suggestion that the humanist view should be more
tolerant towards religion. Here the speaker was, I think, suggesting that the “militant”
humanists (he mentioned Hitchens and Dawkins) attacks on religion sent the
religious scurrying to their defensive positions and the nutters to their guns.
I think he has a point. There is, to my mind, a
large area of overlap between the beliefs of atheistic humanists and the
moderately religious. ‘Do unto others as you would have done to yourselves’ is
surely an aim to strive for: for oneself, one’s family and the community at
large. Unless, of course, you are a terrorist.
Serious as this topic is, there was a lighter side
to the evening. The speaker talked of the depressing effect of news broadcasts
and suggested this is why BBC Radio 4 has a comedy half-hour immediately after
the six o’clock news. Naturally, this led onto the calming effect of The
Archers which follows the seven o’clock news. And this sparked a brief debate
about the main story currently unwinding in this long-running radio soap. And
then to the disclosure (fresh from that night’s episode) that David is not
leaving Ambridge. Phew, great relief all round. Sorry if this seems obscure or
even irrelevant, but it does go to prove that humanists are human.
