For those of you not following the minutiae of the Liberal Democrat party at the moment, which I imagine is almost all of you, Ed Davey is leading many members of his brigade, MPs and councillors, to fast for Ramadan. Your first question here should be: why exactly? Has Ed Davey and many other Lib Dems converted to Islam? Well, no.
They appear to be doing it as some sort of solidarity gesture with British Muslims. In the tweets and videos on the subject, they keep referring to “showing Muslims they aren’t alone” in what they are doing. This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons and instructive of how, months after running the most disastrous political campaign in history, the Lib Dems are bad at politics fought anywhere other than the local level.
The right who have bothered to pay attention to the stunt are attacking it for being a virtue signalling exercise. For being a cynical attempt by the Lib Dems to try and take the Muslim vote from Labour. And I can see their point. Yet if this was the worst thing about the Ramadan solidarity exercise, I would give it a pass. No, the worst thing about it is that it is patronising, not just to Muslims but to anyone who is religious. It misunderstands religion so completely as to be embarrassing. And I say all this as an atheist.
This line about “showing Muslims they aren’t alone” in pursuing a fast at Ramadan is embarrassing. The fast hasn’t been forced upon them. It is not something that some other group of people is oppressing them with. They have done it by choice as an act of faith. It is religiously significant for them to do it every year. You cannot “show them they are not alone” in enacting the rituals of Ramadan; by the very definition of what any religious faith is, they are completely alone in this. It is part of what makes a Muslim a Muslim, just as taking communion is part of what makes a Christian a Christian. Christians don’t feel “alone” in taking communion, at least in any pejorative sense.
I very much hesitate to use the term “cultural appropriation” in any context seeing as how ridiculously it has been used in the past decade. But I think it is the only term that applies here. Indulging in a Muslim ritual, visibly labelling it as such, while not converting to the religion is weird and creepy. Imagine for a moment if Sajid Javid decided he wanted to take communion for a month to “show Christians they are not alone” while not converting to Christianity. It would piss a lot of people off and I don’t need to be religious to understand why. Religion is a deeply important part of religious people’s lives, not some random lifestyle accoutrement. Its symbols and rituals have a deep meaning to believers. To casually dip in and out of a religion’s rituals in a visible, public way, particularly for a political organisation whose motivations in taking part in such a thing needs to be robustly questioned, seems offensive to me. It is patronising of Islam, in my opinion. I mean, I’m not a Muslim so I have no idea if any Muslims will be offended. I just know they probably should be, at least as much as they can work themselves up to be offended by anything the Lib Dems do.
Why are the Lib Dems so bad at this stuff? As I saw Lib Dem after Lib Dem appear on my Twitter feed yesterday talking about how spiritually meaningful they found taking part in Ramadan was for them, I had horrible flashbacks to the general election campaign. Build a Better Future and a pathological avoidance of challenging the Tory Brexit line. It isn’t that they are bad at politics – it’s like they are supernaturally bad at it. In the Ramadan stunt, they have found something that will come across as pandering, virtue signalling and hucksterish to a large section of the electorate, and yet also manages to miss its intended target and potentially offend the people it was being used to suck up to. In other words, it is perfectly bad politics; the kind of thing you would do if you were an enemy of a political party and somehow infiltrated its HQ.
This stuff hurts my heart. We need a liberal party in Britain, badly. The Lib Dems not only don’t seem up to it, but don’t seem to even want to do the job.
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The phoenix says
My prediction that they will soon be as irrelevant as Brexit party
Interesting that Corbyn is now forgotten
Labour has a foundation of about 32 per cent to rise from
Corbyn has not destroyed Labour
But for the love of god
Clegg and Swinson
What have you done
Dave Chapman says
‘We need a liberal party in Britain,…’…
This is absolutely nothing to do with me, I have no skin in this game as they say, other than I am a Taxpayer. That quoted comment just rang a small bell in my head and I checked.
There is a Liberal Party in Britain.
http://liberal.org.uk/
As I say, it has nothing to do with me – I only add the link for academic purposes. I’m also not going to participate in a peeing contest between the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front.
A few weeks ago on Twitter, Nick, we had a brief exchange in which I asked you – hypothetically – to discard one core tenet of LIbDem belief, and at that time I remarked that it only took you a couple of minutes to do so. I’m not certain whether when you talk of a ‘Liberal’ party in the UK that you meant to exclude the ‘Dem’ part of it, but I’m interested as to whether that might be worth exploring? Would it be better to travel solely on the ‘Liberal/ road again?
There seems to be a nascent organisation in waiting for such purposes?
Martin says
Nick:
I do not think it can be called ‘virtue signalling’ when there is signally no virtue .
The real complaint is that when the government have so clearly been fouling up and threaten worse, there are surely feathers somewhere that Lib Dem MPs (and others of prominence) could be ruffling. To be fair, we have to acknowledge the difficulty in getting noticed, but this is better unnoticed.
Save Europe says
You’re so clearly Muslim, it’s embarrassing, frankly.
He IS pandering to towards Muslim votes, which is pathetic in itself.
Do you have no choice but to think, solely, as a collective? Or are you unable to think as lone individuals?
Mark Pack says
Nick: the initiative was one created by Muslim party members and you mention that you’re an atheist yourself. So an atheist telling a religious person that it’s the atheist who understands religion and the religious person who doesn’t, is quite a leap…!
M says
No; you are wrong and the original author is exactly right.
The whole thing just demonstrates the way Liberal Democrats completely fail to understand religion, and do so in an incredibly patronising way.
It’s not new, of course; C.S. Lewis was writing about exactly this dismissive attitude to religion attitude seventy years ago:
The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for society or something of that sort. Now a clearly maintained distinction between what the Faith actually says and what you would like it to have said or what you understand or what you personally find helpful or think probable, forces your audience to realize that you are tied to your data just as the scientist is tied by the results of the experiments; that you are not just saying what you like. This immediately helps them realize that what is being discussed is a question about objective fact — not gas about ideals and points of view
To which might be added, ‘not gas about culture and rituals and solidarity’.
Julian Tisi says
Nick, speaking as both a Lib Dem PPC and as someone who very frequently agrees with you and also speaking as someone who is reasonably religious (Christian/RC) myself I don’t agree with you this time.
Partly because, as Mark Pack mentions, this was started by Muslim party members. Partly also because I’ve often found that religious people really respect and appreciate differences and traditions from other faiths. I remember always getting and receiving overtly religious Christmas cards from a devout Jewish friend at school. I was honoured when invited to share in Purim celebrations. Having celebrated Easter recently under lock-down I can imagine it might be strange for Muslims to be starting Ramadan similarly. I suspect many Muslims might have found this touching and respectful.
M says
So would you be fine with an atheist turning up and partaking in Mass just for the appearance of solidarity?
If so then I think you can’t really call yourself a Roman Catholic as that is — as I understand it — totally opposed to what the Roman church teaches as true. And Roman Catholicism is not the kind of thing where you get to make up your own rules if you don’t like the ones the church teaches.
Julian Tisi says
M. I’m amused by the fact that you’re trying to preach to me about what my religion teaches me! No, I would not be offended if an atheist turned up at mass (I’ve known one or two do so in fact; another story!). In fact it would suggest an openness of attitude that I really respect. The one bit that I would not want them to take part in is communion as this is reserved for the faithful. But here’s the thing… this was a Muslim inviting some non-Muslims to participate in a part of their celebration. How is that disrespectful?
M says
The one bit that I would not want them to take part in is communion as this is reserved for the faithful
Sorry, was I unclear? That’s what I meant by ‘partaking in Mass’.
Ghilmeini says
The more radical Islamists love this because it is a step towards conversion of UK society, which is their actual stated goal.
Bro says
Isnt it the goal of every evangelical religion to convert as many people as they can to their faith. I have no problem with that. I think what you are cunningly referring to is forced conversion and there is no justification in the Quran for that.
” let there be no compulsion in religion”
Conrad Wood says
The LDs are not a Liberal party; they are the product of a merger between the Liberal Party and the right-wing Labour breakaway , the SDP , Social Democratic Party.. Remember the Gang of 4? That’s where they ‘ Democratic’ in ‘ Liberal Democratic’ comes from.
There was a part of the old Lib Party which rejected the merger. They still exist I think. There was also a part of the SDP which rejected the merger; they certainly do exist and Rod Liddle belongs to it.
I like your piece.
M says
I see they’re determined to make it worse:
https://twitter.com/iangmanning/status/1254363206228860928
‘Muslims don’t “choose” to be muslim’
I actually cannot even imagine the thought processes that go into such a sentence. What on Earth does he think Islam is?
(Actually I can of course, it’s the usual Lib Dem supercilious attitude to religion that takes as read nobody could actually seriously believe all that nonsense so they must be doing it because they were brought up in the culture, etc, so of course they didn’t ‘choose’ it.)
Bro says
I’m a Muslim and I choose Islam every second of everyday.
So if this doesnt fit into your Islamophobic manner of thinking.
Bro says
Isnt it the goal of every evangelical religion to convert as many people as they can to their faith. I have no problem with that. I think what you are cunningly referring to is forced conversion and there is no justification in the Quran for that.
” let there be no compulsion in religion”
Mohammed Amin says
How many Muslims do you know who felt patronised?
I attended the online iftar and certainly did not feel patronised. I was pleased that Ed Davey decided to experience a fast.
When I attend a Christian service at the invitation of the church concerned, the Christians who invited me clearly do not feel patronised.
What really underlies your concern?
M says
When I attend a Christian service at the invitation of the church concerned, the Christians who invited me clearly do not feel patronised.
Do you take communion when you attend Christian services?
I must admit I don’t know that many Muslims, but I was under the impression that the fast of Ramadan was a particular spiritual duty, not just a tradition; more like, in Christian terms, a sacrament than a mere service of worship. Is that not the case?
Nic Wells says
I agree. But Lent is the Christian equivalent of Ramadan. Taking communion isn’t.
M says
Lent is the Christian equivalent of Ramadan
Really? Are you sure? I thought that fasting during Ramadan was one of the pillars of Islam, ie, absolutely central to it. That would make it in Christian terms closer (obviously the analogy is inexact) to a sacrament (ie, an outward sign of an inward and spiritual state as commanded by God, such as baptism or communion) than to a mere tradition (such as fasting during Lent).