JeremyStangroom.Com

It’s nice that Baroness Uddin has been cleared of any wrongdoing over her expenses claims.

However, it is certainly arguable that she ought to be shamed for having (jointly) written – or at least for having put her name to – the following:

No religion of the world restricts choice, and we believe that good parents cannot either.

No religion of the world restricts choice!!!! And I’m not quoting it out of context (see Page 1).

What on earth were you thinking, Baroness?

A lot of people are pretty insulting about Richard Seymour. In one sense, this is understandable, because his political commitments are juvenile (I mean that literally: the SWP espouse the kind of politics one should have gotten over by the time Freshers’ week finishes at university).

But the suggestion that he is stupid – which crops up mainly in blog commentary – is completely absurd. He just isn’t. This post, for example, is an extremely good analysis of the situation confronting the far-Left in Britain in the present day.

Of course, people love to belittle their political opponents. But to be effective, the rhetoric has to have at least some resonance. Calling John Game ‘stupid’ works, because the overwhelming majority of his public utterances support this view (though not all of them, he wrote good stuff on Iran); calling Yoshie Furuhashi a ‘frothing Ahmadinejad shill’ kind of makes sense, because one does get the impression that Yoshie would like to bed the Iranian leader; but suggesting that Seymour is unintelligent is just so far wide of the mark as to be ridiculous.

Plus it smacks of intellectual jealousy.

His writing style, though – now that is ripe for parody.

Pro-Vivisection March

In May 2004, the British Government announced that it was establishing a new national centre which would fund work directed towards the aim of replacing, refining and reducing the use of animals in scientific research. Lord Sainsbury, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science and Innovation, marked the announcement by insisting that whatever the ultimate aim of the centre, it was clear that animal testing was currently necessary for proper scientific research. In this, he was echoing a statement which he had made some months earlier, reaffirming the commitment of the British government to animal research undertaken within existing regulatory frameworks.

However, this claim that animal experimentation is necessary for scientific research is not universally accepted. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is most keenly contested by the animal rights lobby. The National Anti-Vivisection Society, for instance, argues that ‘the fundamental flaw of animal-based research is that each species responds differently to drugs and chemicals, therefore results from animal tests are unreliable as a means of predicting likely effects in humans. Thus, animal experiments are unreliable, unethical, and unnecessary.’

Whilst this view might justifiably be regarded as being rooted in the hyperbole of a pressure group, the animal rights lobby is not alone in suggesting that the issues surrounding animal experimentation are difficult. For example, in a BMJ article titled ‘Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans?’ (February 28, 2004), Pandora Pound et al noted in their first sentence that: ‘Clinicians and the public often consider it axiomatic that animal research has contributed to the treatment of human disease, yet little evidence is available to support this view.’ As a result of this claim, the UK media reported that scientists were beginning to doubt whether animal research was useful at all.

‘It was completely predictable that that phrase would become a kind of rallying call for the animal rights movement, and it is very unfortunate,’ says Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (nb. Blakemore relinquished this position in 2007), when I mention the article to him. ‘But it is possible to counter the claim with the fact that the Royal Society has recently published a pretty comprehensive study which says that virtually every medical advance in the last century has depended on the use of animals in research at some point; or with the statement from the Department of Health, in its evidence to the House of Lords committee on animal experimentation, that the National Health Service could not operate without the foundation of the knowledge which animal research has built. The overwhelming view of the scientific establishment, and I’m not using that expression in a pejorative way, is that animal research is necessary for progress in medical science.

‘Also, it is important to point out that there has been some misinterpretation of the data which Pound et al analyse in their paper. They found, and I think they’re right about this, that the transition between animal research and clinical application often lacks rigour in terms of a proper review of evidence. The eagerness of some scientists or drug companies to try out new treatments can lead to the misinterpretation or over-interpretation of data from animal research. But they only examined six areas of research, out of the many hundreds where it is well documented that animal experimentation led to clinical applications. Specifically, they looked at six comprehensive reviews of animal evidence and the associated attempts at clinical application.

‘In one of these cases, they found that despite clear evidence from the work of people like Michael Marmot that human health is linked to social status and responsibility, there is no analogue of this phenomenon amongst primates. But this isn’t surprising; it doesn’t work this way in primates. Marmot was looking at the civil service, which is not exactly the kind of environment you can easily imagine being mimicked in primate groups.

‘The other five cases were situations where clinical trials, or the preliminary treatment of human beings, had started on the basis of a cursory examination and often very optimistic interpretation of previous animal research. In every case, it turned out that the clinical technique did not work. In retrospect, when the animal research was thoroughly and systematically reviewed, it turned out that the results from the animal experiments didn’t justify the clinical application. So far from showing a mismatch between animal and human results, it showed a perfect correlation. The failure was in the transition between the animal results and the clinical studies.’

What then of the criticism that the small differences in the makeup of complex systems such as animals and humans can make a lot of difference in terms of how they respond to chemicals and drugs, and that, as a result, extrapolation from animals to humans is necessarily unreliable?

‘There are probably only two or three properly qualified people in the world who hold this position,’ Blakemore replies. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of physicians in the United States say that it is essential to use animals in medical research; and more than ninety-five per cent of British physicians say the same thing. So whilst it is important to listen to maverick opinion, it is clear we shouldn’t put too much weight on it when one considers that the American Medical Association, the Royal Society, the British Medical Association, and the General Medical Council all state that animal experimentation is necessary.’

Presumably then it must be possible to give specific examples of the importance of animal research which will settle the issue?

‘Yes, almost everything is an example,’ says Blakemore. ‘Every drug, every form of advanced surgery, nearly every antibiotic, nearly every vaccine; the development of all of them has at some stage involved animal testing. What more evidence is there? By law, every drug has to be tested on animals before it can be used on humans; you cannot get a prescription for a drug which has been developed in the last one hundred years which hasn’t been tested on animals. So when you ask for examples, just about everything is an example: every pain killer; every treatment for heart disease, kidney disease and cancer; chemotherapy; radiotherapy; surgical techniques; bypass surgery; open heart surgery; you name it, animals were involved in the research.’

So what are the motivations of the people who argue that animal research is unreliable and unnecessary? Are they just pursuing a particular moral agenda?

‘I’m not sure,’ Blakemore answers. ‘I know that Ray Greek, for example, has argued that his is not a moral position; he doesn’t object to the use of animals in medical research on moral grounds. He has said, much to the consternation of his own supporters, that if it took the death of 10,000 chimpanzees to find a cure for AIDS, then he would be in favour of it. His argument then is a factual one; that animal research doesn’t work. But I would be extremely critical of the evidence he cites to support his view. Mainly he makes use of excised quotations, which seem to suggest that eminent researchers doubt the value of animal research. But if you go back to the source of the quotations, you find that they are being used out of context, and that the thrust of the papers they appear in contradicts the argument the quotations are being used to support. I don’t call this evidence.’

Perhaps the area of animal research which causes most controversy is that which involves primates. In the UK, this issue became headline news at the beginning of 2004, with the announcement by Cambridge University that it had axed plans to build a new multi-million pound centre for primate research. The BBC reported that the decision to abandon the project was based in part on the spiralling cost of satisfying the requirements of animal welfare legislation and the need for security to protect against the threat of attack from animal rights activists. The decision was greeted with regret by many people in the scientific community. For example, Mark Matfield, director of the Research Defence Society, called it a ‘serious blow for British medical research’ and argued that ‘the government needs to bring in tougher legislation to tackle extremist campaigns, otherwise they will remain a threat to all medical science that depends on animal research.’

What is the importance of primate research? It accounts for only a tiny percentage of the total of animal research, so presumably there are some quite specific reasons for doing it?

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Blakemore confirms. ‘To get a licence for primate research requires that a very special case be made; not only that animals are necessary for the research, but also that it must be primates, that no other animal will do. Moreover, particular attention is paid to the question of suffering; it is much harder to get a license where primates might suffer than it is in the case of say mice. Also, the number of animals to be used, and the objectives of the research will be taken into account. What this means is that research with primates will be of great strategic importance in terms of its potential to deliver results, and it will be work which simply cannot be done with other species. We’re talking here primarily about three main areas of research: endocrinology, where for many of the hormone systems, the monkey is the only model which has the required likeness to human beings; neuroscience, because of the similarity between the organisation of the primate and human brain; and some areas of vaccinology, particularly, for example, in attempts to develop AIDS vaccines.’

The specific worry about primates has largely to do with their cognitive abilities; particularly, there is the possibility that they are self-aware; self-conscious, rather than simply conscious. The philosopher Peter Singer, for example, in his book In Defence of Animals, asks why we are willing to lock up chimpanzees in primate research centres and subject them to painful experiments when we would never think of doing the same thing to a retarded human being who had lesser mental abilities. Singer concludes that it is only speciesism which explains this difference. What does Blakemore make of this kind of argument?

‘I know the arguments, and would keep an open-mind on the nature of the evidence about something like primate self-awareness,’ he replies. ‘But I think it is very important to hang on to one strong moral principle, which is that there is a clear distinction between our responsibilities to our own species and our responsibilities to other species. Most people, given the choice between saving the life of a human or an animal, will think that their primary obligation is to the human being. I’m very fond of animals, I have kept pets all my life, but if it came to a choice between my cat, which has lived with us for some seven years, and is very much a part of the family, and the life of one of my daughters, I would not have the slightest hesitation in saying that the life of my daughter should have priority; and I think that most people would feel the same way. They might love animals, but they see that human beings are just different.’

The response which somebody sympathetic to the Singer view would likely offer to this argument is that at least part of what leads us to the thought that humans are different from animals might be present in a primate and absent in a severely disabled human being.

‘Yes, the idea that all that matters is sentience,’ says Blakemore. ‘But we need a firmer foundation than this to base our judgements upon. In the end, all it amounts to is an anthropomorphic claim about what it must be like to be a monkey. However, this can lead to serious errors of judgement, such as that of Peter Singer himself, when he argues that there is a line to be drawn in terms of sentience somewhere between rats and fish. But why? Just because we can’t get ourselves into the mental life of a fish, doesn’t mean that a fish is not sentient. The correct starting position is that it is possible that all living animals with a nervous system have some kind of experience. Therefore, we have a responsibility to all species to minimise suffering, but on top of this we have a primary obligation to our own species. This is a very normal, biological principle. You see it in virtually every species; they treat their own species differently from other species.’

So when Singer talks about speciesism, would Blakemore be happy to accept that as his position?

‘Yes, that is exactly my position,’ he confirms. ‘But I don’t accept that “speciesism” is a pejorative term; I’m quite happy to defend the position. In the end, you have to draw a line; you couldn’t walk down the street if you really believed that to kill any living thing was a sin or immoral because you’d be worried about the small insects under your feet. There is an extreme version of Buddhism which holds to that position, but taken to its logical conclusion it is ridiculous; you’d end up never moving because you’d be worried about hurting microbes. So it is necessary to draw the line somewhere. The only firm line on genetic and morphological grounds is between our own species and other species. But the fact that we’re justified in treating our own species differently doesn’t mean that we have a kind of Cartesian license to treat other species in any way that we want; because of our own moral status, we have an extended moral obligation towards the rest of the world. It is just that this moral obligation doesn’t entail that we have the same responsibilities to other species as we do to each other. So I’m a speciesist, and I would defend that position.’

At the end of 2003, it was reported that Blakemore had been turned down for a knighthood because of his support for vivisection; and that, as a result, he was considering his position as the head of the Medical Research Council. ‘It has nothing to do with whether I particularly deserve an honour, that is neither here nor there,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. ‘The mission statement of the medical research organisation which I now run includes a specific commitment to engaging with the public on issues in medical research. How can I now, in the present circumstances, go to MRC scientists and ask them to take the risk of being willing to talk about animal experimentation with this indication that doing so will reduce their standing and their reputation in the eyes of the government?’

Was he reassured by the government’s response to this situation that it fully accepted the need for animal research, and that it admired and supported those scientists who had been on the front line in the struggle against animal rights extremists?

‘Yes, I was,’ he replies. ‘But actually, what was almost more important was the widespread support that came from the scientific community and the media. The support from the media, in particular, was quite extraordinary and a big surprise; virtually the entire spectrum made strong statements about the importance of animal experimentation. So the debate served a useful purpose; it produced a kind of national solidarity, which was much needed. This is also reflected in public opinion. The latest opinion poll shows ninety per cent of the population in support of animal research. It is significant that there is no other major issue where you get this kind of consensus; we still treat the issue of animal research as if it is highly controversial, as if the public haven’t made up their mind; but they have made up their mind.’

The opinion poll which Blakemore refers to here was couched in a particular way; specifically, people were asked for their opinion about animal research on the assumption that certain criteria had been met. For example, one question asked whether people could accept animal research for medical purposes, where there was no other alternative. But, of course, it is precisely the claim of the animal rights lobby that there are alternatives to animal research.

‘Well, if there are, let’s see them delivered by those people who claim that there are,’ Blakemore responds, when I put this to him. ‘I have faced the whole range of arguments from those who are opposed to animal research. I have enormous respect for people who simply say that they don’t care about the range of benefits which are the result of animal experimentation; they don’t deny that there have been these benefits, but they don’t want any part of them because they think that animal experimentation is wrong. It is very difficult to maintain this position, because we all do well as a result of advances in medical techniques; for example, we all benefit from the fact that people are vaccinated, and from our knowledge of the importance of public health. But I understand and respect this position.

‘However, I have very little respect for people who say that animals are so very different from human beings that animal research has no relevance for understanding humans; or that all treatments which have been developed on animals are dangerous to humans; or that animal researchers enjoy what they’re doing, that they’re basically sadists, and that anyway, it is only really about filling the pockets of the drug companies. This is not a parody of the kinds of arguments which are made; and I have no time for them. They are rationally indefensible. If there are alternatives, let’s see them. We want them. I don’t know of a single person who uses animals in their research who wouldn’t rather use an alternative. Moreover, there is a great paradox here: the alternatives to animal research which do exist have been developed by researchers who have previously experimented on animals. I’ve had grants to develop alternatives, I’ve done a lot of work on tissue cultures, and I use computer simulations for a lot of my work, yet I’m accused of being a villain because I’ve also experimented on animals.’

Extracted from What Scientists Think (pub. Routledge) by Jeremy Stangroom.

Fluffy Bunny

Human beings are very good at believing things to be true just because they want them to be true. In some ways, this is a useful ability. For example, the belief that one will beat a normally deadly cancer is helpful if one is undergoing the painful chemotherapy required to give one any chance of survival at all. However, when it comes to our ability to discern the truth about the world, to assess evidence and argument according to the dictates of rational enquiry, our tendency to engage in wishful thinking is no help whatsoever.

Consider, for example, the part that it plays in the currently high profile debate over animal rights and vivisection. It is perfectly possible to object to animal experimentation on moral grounds: for example, one might hold that all life is sacred and that it should always be preserved. However, it is much more difficult to argue that animal experimentation is unnecessary because it has no scientific benefit. Colin Blakemore, one time head of the MRC (Medical Research Council), points out that:

Every drug, every form of advanced surgery, nearly every antibiotic, nearly every vaccine – the development of them all has at some stage involved animal testing… every pain killer; every treatment for heart disease, kidney disease and cancer; chemotherapy; radiotherapy; surgical techniques; bypass surgery; open heart surgery – you name it, animals were involved in the research.

Yet the line taken by many anti-vivisectionists is precisely that animal research has little, if any, medical benefit. For example, the section on “Bad Science” on the SPEAK web site is headed up with the claim that “Using primates kills people”. Further reading reveals that 70,000 people in England each year are killed or disabled by drugs that have been tested on animals.

It is easy enough to demolish this kind of argument: whilst it is true that whenever a drug is associated with a bad outcome, then animal testing will have been part of its development (because all drugs are tested on animals), it is also true: that we judge that the risks associated with powerful drugs are worth it; that we would be worse off in terms of deaths and injuries had there been no animal testing; and that we are overwhelmingly better off in general as a result of drugs that have been developed using vivisection.

Perhaps what is more interesting than the details of the (risible) arguments employed by anti-vivisectionists is the neat correspondence they set up between the wished-for and the real; that is, between the almost visceral desire for a world where there is no animal experimentation, and the claim that by happy coincidence our world does not reward animal experimentation. This kind of wishful thinking short-circuits the necessity to engage in messy and complicated arguments about morality and the relative value of human and animal life. It constitutes both intellectual and moral cowardice.

There is an interesting contrast here with the position of the vivisectionists. They too desire a world without animal experimentation, but recognise that it is not available unless we forego benefits to medical research. Here’s Blakemore again:

If there are alternatives [to animal research], let’s see them. We want them. I don’t know of a single person who uses animals in their research, who wouldn’t rather use an alternative.

It isn’t just anti-vivisectionists who engage in wishful thinking, of course. In fact, wishful thinking is ubiquitous, which is something we need to worry about if we are interested in finding out the truth about things. Consider, for example, that the recent history of the social sciences is replete with examples of an almost childish desire to reconstruct the world through the filter of political, ideological and moral commitments. Marxist theorists spent a large part of the twentieth century falling over each other trying to explain why revolution hadn’t occurred quite yet; sociologists, desperate to detach human behaviour from biology, spent their time jumping through hoops in order to explain away data that suggested that at least some human attributes and behaviour are inherited; and anthropologists, even today, in the name of resisting Western hegemony, happily grant epistemological privilege to local and situated “knowledges”.

Even people ostensibly committed to rational enquiry fall into the trap of wishful thinking. It ill behoves humanists, self-appointed defenders of reason par excellence, to sneer at the likes of Philip Gosse for supposing that the fossil record has been planted by God, whilst they remain committed to the view that it will be possible to reconcile the human-centred aspects of humanism with what science teaches us about the natural world and our place in it. The jury is still out on whether things such as free will, moral responsibility and the idea of human progress will survive the increases in knowledge that science brings. To suppose otherwise is to engage in wishful thinking. It might be more subtle than the kind engaged in by anti-vivisectionists or Philip Gosse style Biblical literalists, and perhaps it will be passed off as understandable optimism, but it no less wishful thinking for that. It is just another example of the way in which ideological, moral and political commitments tend to infect the judgements that we make about the world.

Edmund Burke is acclaimed today as one of the originators of modern political conservatism. In particular, his defence of the virtues of tradition and prejudice in Reflections on the Revolution in France is considered exemplary as a statement of conservative principles. However, there is more to Burke’s philosophy than a simple celebration of the established social order. Not least, it is suffused with a thoroughgoing scepticism about the character and capabilities of human beings, which led him to reject the Enlightenment view that reason can be readily employed to the betterment of mankind. In this sense, Burke’s ideas can be seen as a counterblast against the sort of Enlightenment thinking that was sweeping through Europe towards the end of the 18th century.

Burke was born to a Protestant father and Catholic mother in Ireland in 1729. Raised as a protestant, he excelled at school, passing entrance examinations to Trinity College, Dublin in 1746. After graduating, he moved to London, where he studied law at Temple’s Inn. However, he was more interested in the world of letters than the legal profession, and after the publication of his satirical A Vindication of Natural Society,  and then a year later a philosophical study of aesthetics titled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, he became thoroughly immersed in London literary life (which at that time boasted Samuel Johnson, David Garrick and Oliver Goldsmith amongst its numbers).

Burke’s specifically political career took off after he was elected to the House of Commons in 1765. It was during his nearly thirty years as a parliamentarian that he produced the work that is the bedrock of his reputation  As well as the Reflections, he wrote significant treatises on the American colonies, the India question, Catholic emancipation, the English constitution, and the threat to religion from the new atheism. However, his reputation amongst his contemporaries rested on more than just his written work. He was also a formidable orator and statesman – never quite making it to the top of the greasy pole, but still able to command the attention of the House of Commons right up until three years before his death in 1797.

His conservatism was rooted in a deeply ingrained suspicion of any radical politics that was based on abstract principles derived solely from the operations of reason; or as he put it, on an “insuperable reluctance to destroy any established system of government, upon a theory.” There is a basic idea here that is quite straightforward: Society is complex, and human nature unpredictable; therefore, it is not prudent to mess around with political and social arrangements that have stood the test of time. The reason why this became an issue during the 18th Century was that Enlightenment thinkers were arguing precisely that it was possible to reform society on the basis of a priori conceptions of natural rights, such as liberty and equality.

The Unitarian dissenting minister, Richard Price, for example, whose sermon “On the Love of Our Country” motivated Burke to write the Reflections, greeted the French revolution, which ostensibly instantiated Enlightenment principles, by declaring that he could now “depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” For Price, salvation here meant “a progressive improvement in human affairs which will terminate in greater degrees of light and virtue and happiness than have yet been known” – the world, he thought, was “outgrowing its evils … anti-Christ falling and the millennium hastening.”

Burke had no truck with the unbounded optimism of this view of the situation in France. In the Reflections, he contrasted the French revolution with the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 where William of Orange marched on London unopposed to replace the Catholic James II. The situation in England required a revolution in order to return government to a condition that was in line with the traditions of which it was a part. The French revolution, in contrast, aimed simply to slough off the past. It was an attempt at a root and branch reconstruction of society on the basis of an abstract philosophy of natural rights. There was no recognition of the importance of tradition, custom and sentiment. It was, Burke argued, bound to end in bloody failure.

Part of Burke’s scepticism about the proposition that a priori rational reflection might successfully be articulated to the service of radical social reform has to do with the central and necessary importance of specific social and historical circumstances. Consider, for example, the claim that liberty is a good thing. On its own, it is almost meaningless:

Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect…Is it because liberty, in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? (Reflections on the Revolution in France)

Burke’s view was that it was simply too risky to allow natural rights to trump an established system of government. Moreover, the shared traditions, beliefs and habits of a nation, instantiated and passed on through extant institutions, function to secure the benefits that have been hard won by previous generations.

By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence, are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world… (Reflections)

Burke’s rejection of Enlightenment talk of natural rights, though, is fuelled by more than just a pragmatic, cautionary sensibility. It is also linked to a particular conception of human nature. The Enlightenment philosophers tended to think that human beings, certainly in the absence of the corrupting effect of modern society, are systematically capable of rationality, fellow-feeling and benevolence. Thus, for example, Rousseau argued that in a state of nature humans are “noble savages”, who live solitary and peaceful existences.

Burke’s view was radically different, having much more in common with Augustine and Hobbes than with the Philosophes. He believed that human beings are fallen, corrupt, and capable of great evil if the civilizing veneer of established institutions is removed. In the absence of the constraints imposed by tradition, prejudice and habit, humans are little more than the “shriveled, meager, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.” Thus:

Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individual, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will be controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power outside of themselves. (Reflections)

Of course, the trouble is that it is all too easy to forfeit the hard won civilising effect of the state and civil society. It cannot be conjured up de novo, and then recreated time and again, simply by an appeal to abstract principles and talk of natural rights. The consequence of thinking that unfettered freedom is freedom in toto is precisely the kind of Jacobin excesses that occurred in the French revolution. In the Reflections, this idea finds its most famous expression in the passage dealing with an attack on Marie Antoinette:

…the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her to save herself by flight – that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give – that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence the persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked… (Reflections)

It might be true then that the lives of men at the end of the 18th century were no longer “nasty, short and brutish”, but it was Burke’s view that one sure way to return them to that state was to tear down the structures of established government in the name of a reassertion of natural rights.

Not surprisingly, the reaction to the publication of Burkes’ Reflections was mixed. The Establishment, it hardly needs to be said, loved it. Radicals were not so keen. Its weakness is obvious: in defending established the status quo, it seems to justify the iniquities that are perpetrated in its name. As Mary Wollstonecraft pointed out, it’s a bit rich getting worked up about the fate of the Queen of France, if you don’t appear to care a jot for the multitude of mothers who cannot afford to feed their babies.

But there is something rather striking about the Reflections that is worth commenting upon: Burke largely got it right about the French revolution. As Conor Cruise O’Brien has pointed out, many people assume that he wrote his polemic after the Jacobin terror had accounted for the deaths of countless thousands of French people. But, in fact, Burke foresaw the “transmigrations, fire and blood”:

…the September Massacres, the Terror, the executions of the King and Queen – those events all lay in the future. And yet there is a sense in which those events are already present in the Reflections. They are present in the sense that the ferocious dynamic which Burke ascribes to the Revolution, even in 1790, became visible to the world through those events of 1792-94. (National Review, Dec 17, 1990)

It is important to remember that Burke was not an unsophisticated thinker. As we have seen, his conservatism was motivated by a distrust of abstract principles, and a belief that it is necessary to pay attention to history and circumstance. This means that his political views are much less predictable than a straightforward understanding of conservatism might suggest. For example, the position he took on the events leading up to the American revolution was a lot more nuanced than might be supposed. He did not think that Britain should adopt an aggressive policy towards the wayward colonists. Rather, in a feted parliamentary speech, he urged that Britain should make concessions in order to secure the loyalty of America. History and experience suggested that force wouldn’t work, so whatever might be felt about the right of Britain to levy unpopular taxes, for example, the only sensible course of action was compromise.

Edmund Burke was not a systematic philosopher (indeed some commentators go so far as to claim that he was not a philosopher at all). Rather, like his contemporary Thomas Paine, he was a political thinker who sought to influence the course of social and political events through his writing. Even if ultimately unsuccessful in this way, it is certainly the case that Burke’s ideas have informed the thoughts of successive generations of political theorists. His arguments against the French revolution now seem a little extreme; but the ideas that motivated them retain their significance, and form part of the armoury of many a conservative thinker.

This essay originally appeared in the Independent newspaper as part of their Great Philosophers series.

Alabama police attack Selma marchers

Sheyann Webb still has nightmares about the masked horsemen who thundered across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on the afternoon of March 7th 1965. ‘I was terrified,’ she later told Frank Sikora. ‘I saw the horsemen coming toward me and they had those awful masks on…Some of them had clubs, others had ropes or whips, which they swung about them like they were driving cattle… People were running and falling and ducking… I never got hit, but one of the horses went right by me and I heard the swish sound as the whip went over my head and cracked some man across the back. It seemed to take forever to get across the bridge.’

Sheyann Webb, in 1965 only eight years old, had been part of a peaceful, six-hundred strong protest march when the horsemen attacked. The mayhem and violence that followed, broadcast across the United States and around the world, marked a turning point in the civil rights struggle of African-Americans.

Background

The events of ‘Bloody Sunday’, as this day has come to be known, had their roots in the racism and segregation practices of the American South. It is easy to forget just how entrenched racism was in the former Confederate states. Although slavery had been abolished in 1865 by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, the Southern states had quickly introduced new laws – the Jim Crow laws – that had legalised discrimination and segregation. Between 1870 and 1884, for example, eleven Southern states enacted legislation that prohibited interracial marriages, and soon afterwards laws appeared formalising segregation practices in the areas of schooling, transport, public accommodation and recreation.

The racism of the American South was also manifest in a general atmosphere of violence and intimidation. The lynching of African-Americans was common right up until the Second World War, often occurring with the tacit approval of local authorities. In Waco, Texas, for example, Jesse Washington, an illiterate 17-year-old, who had been convicted of raping and killing a white woman, was mutilated and burned alive in 1916 by a cheering mob that reportedly included the mayor and chief of police. Moreover, Blacks could be lynched without being suspected of any crime at all. Merely offending ‘racial etiquette’ – maybe flirting with a white woman, or talking out of turn – could be enough to incur the wrath of a lynch mob. Perhaps most notoriously, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy from Chicago, was tortured and killed near Money, Mississippi in 1955 by two local men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant. His ‘crime’ had been to make mildly sexual advances towards the latter’s wife, an offence against local custom, which, in the eyes of his killers – and presumably also the all-white jury that acquitted them (despite their later confessions) – merited the severest retribution.

Segregation, violence and intimidation, then, were part of everyday life for African-Americans living in the American South in the first half of the twentieth century. The civil rights movement, which exploded onto the scene in the 1950s, sought to bring this to an end. Between the years of 1954 and 1965, employing a variety of tactics including demonstrations and marches, sit-ins, and freedom rides, the movement achieved a number of notable victories in stripping away the legal basis of segregation and discrimination. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, prohibited racial discrimination in all places of public accommodation, including theatres, cinemas and concert halls. However, at the start of 1965, there was still one area where very little progress had been made; namely, voter registration.

In a democratic country, the ability to take part in elections is a prerequisite of political power and representation. Therefore, to the extent that Southern blacks were excluded from the political process, their drive for equal rights was necessarily compromised. It is easy to understand then why it was a concern to civil rights activists that in states such as Mississippi and Alabama voter registration amongst African-Americans ran at less than 15% of eligible voters. It was this issue that saw Selma, Alabama move to centre stage of the civil rights story.

Selma

In early 1963, there were 15,000 African-Americans of voting age in Selma, yet only 156 of them had registered to vote. There were two main reasons for this. First, many black people did not consider voting to be something that properly concerned them. In his great civil rights history Eyes on the Prize, Juan Williams reports that one elderly woman greeted a voter registration drive in Selma by claiming that she didn’t have ‘enough mind’ to vote. Second, and more significantly, Selma’s blacks experienced violence, intimidation and obstruction if they attempted to get themselves onto the ballot. There was nothing unusual about Selma in this regard. African-Americans in the South had faced danger and difficulty in registering to vote for nearly as long as slavery had been abolished. Many Southern states employed literacy tests that were almost impossible to pass to ensure that even those potential black voters prepared to run the gauntlet of white violence did not end up on the voters register.

However, there was something about Selma in the early 1960s that made it particularly attractive to civil rights activists. Its sheriff, Jim Clark, an unreconstructed bigot and segregationist, could be relied upon to react violently and intemperately to any attempt to organise a voter registration drive. Therefore, Selma offered the possibility of national publicity for the campaign to end discrimination in voting rights. This fitted nicely with the strategy of civil rights organisations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which relied on forcing politicians to legislate by provoking confrontations with local authority that demonstrated the iniquity of systematic racial discrimination.

The SNCC, in particular, had early success in Selma with this strategy. In October 1963, it organised a ‘Freedom Day’, which saw some 250 blacks queuing outside the courthouse in order to register to vote. They were there for only three hours before they were attacked by Sheriff Clark’s deputies after two SNCC workers had tried to hand out sandwiches to the assembled crowd. However, although news of this and other incidents reached Washington, there was little progress during 1964 on legislation that would guarantee the right of blacks to vote. Consequently, in January 1965, Martin Luther King and the SCLC decided to make Selma the focus of a concerted campaign for equal voting rights. “We will seek to arouse the federal government by marching by the thousands to the places of registration,’ King declared from the pulpit of Selma’s Brown Chapel. ‘When we get the right to vote, we will send to the statehouse not men who will stand in the doorways of universities to keep Negroes out, but men who will uphold the cause of Justice. Give us the ballot.’

Their campaign enjoyed almost immediate success. On January 19th, King led some 250 marchers to Selma’s courthouse, with the intention of provoking a confrontation with Sheriff Clark. It worked perfectly. Clark lost his temper after the demonstrators had refused to be corralled in an alley. Amelia Boynton later described what happened:

Clark had a big club in his hand, and he yelled to me, ‘Where are you going?…’ Before I could gather my wits, he had left the steps and jumped behind me, grabbed me by my coat, propelled me around and started shoving me down the street. I was stunned….I said, ‘I hope the newspapers see you acting this role.’ He said: ‘Dammit, I hope they do.’

 Sheyann Webb, who two months later was to be scared witless by the masked horseman on Edmund Pettus Bridge, relates what happened next.

We had been there for twenty or thirty minutes, standing, talking, singing a few songs, when I heard this disturbance toward the front. Then folks began shouting and crying out; I saw the sheriff with a hand behind the neck of Mrs. Amelia Boynton, running with her and hollering.

By arresting Boynton in full view of the media, Clark had played straight into the protestors’ hands. The incident made it into the national newspapers, with both the New York Times and the Washington Post running illustrated stories about it. Over the next six weeks the civil rights movement kept up the pressure in Selma with more marches, which led to more arrests, and more publicity. Perhaps the most surreal incident occurred on February 3rd when some 300 high school students marched on the Selma courthouse, where they were arrested en masse.

Not surprisingly, the federal authorities were by this time becoming interested in Selma. In early February, President Johnson gave public support to the demand for equal voting rights, insisting that every American ‘should be concerned with the efforts of our fellow Americans to register to vote in Alabama’. For moderate whites, there were extrinsic, as well as intrinsic, reasons for heeding Johnson’s call. The events in Selma were disastrous for America’s reputation abroad and damaging to the political and economic prospects of the South. For African-Americans and civil rights activists, of course, it was a much more personal battle.

‘There’s no aspect of my life that wasn’t affected,’ says Jean Wiley about her involvement in the Southern Freedom Struggle. ‘It wasn’t an episode, it was a way of life and a way of viewing life and living life. Living my beliefs. It affects everything.’

It was a struggle for which many people gave their lives, including Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose killing late in February brought matters to a head in Selma, and led to the protest march on March 7th. Jackson had been part of a demonstration in nearby Marion that was attacked by state troopers. His mother and grandfather had been assaulted, and he had gone to help them, when he was shot in the stomach by a state trooper. On February 26th, at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, he died of his injuries. At his funeral, the Reverend Jim Bevel suggested that ‘it would be fitting to take Jimmie Lee’s body and march it all the way to the state capitol in Montgomery’. Marion civil rights leader Albert Turner agreed:

[W]e wanted to carry Jimmie’s body to George Wallace and dump it on the steps of the Capitol. We had decided that we were going to get killed or we was going to be free.

Bloody Sunday

On the morning of March 7th 1965, Sheyann Webb, Martin Luther King’s ‘Smallest Freedom Fighter’, was woken by the sound of car horns and shouting. Albert Turner had arrived with 300 people from Perry County, Alabama in readiness for the march to Montgomery. Sheyann was determined to join the protest, despite her young age and her mother’s reservations:

She had sat up with me the night before, telling me that if I didn’t feel well I didn’t have to march. In fact, she was hoping I wouldn’t. But…I knew I belonged there with the people. It was important that I try to go with them to Montgomery in hopes of seeing Governor Wallace and telling him we wanted the right to vote, the right to be free.

Sheyann got her wish. Just before 2.00pm that afternoon she set out with 600 fellow marchers, led by SCLC’s Hosea Williams and SNCC chairman John Lewis, towards Broad Street and the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At first they were surprised that Sheriff Clark’s men were nowhere to be seen. However, as they reached the centre of the bridge, they saw a line of Alabama state troopers, helmeted and carrying clubs, waiting for them on the other side. ‘They were wearing blue helmets, blue jackets, and they carried clubs in their hands; they had those gas-mask pouches slung across their shoulders,’ Sheyann later recalled.

As soon as they had reached the troopers, the marchers were ordered to disperse and to return to Brown Chapel. They refused to comply, and there followed a short standoff, which ended when Major John Cloud gave the order for his men to break-up the march. The troopers moved into the protestors, clubbing John Lewis to the ground, and then setting about the mass of the crowd.

‘I heard all this screaming and the people were turning and I saw this first part of the line running and stumbling back toward us,’ remembers Sheyann Webb. ‘They came running and some of them were crying out and somebody yelled, “Oh, God, they’re killing us!” I think I just froze then.’ The troopers fired tear gas, and then the masked horsemen of Sheyann’s nightmares charged.

‘The horses…were more humane than the troopers; they stepped over fallen victims,’ Amelia Boynton later recalled. ‘As I stepped aside from a troopers club, I felt a blow on my arm…Another blow by a trooper, as I was gasping for breath, knocked me to the ground and there I lay, unconscious…’.

The marchers had no chance; bruised and bleeding, they retreated under the police assault back into Selma. Many of the activists who were not hospitalised or otherwise incapacitated headed for Brown Chapel.

Rachel West, Sheyann’s young friend, relates what she witnessed there in the aftermath of the attack:

[T]he faces of the people. They were like masks. Some of them were still crying, but they all just sat there staring to the front. I had never seen such looks before…And everything was so quiet. The only sound was the sobbing. We had really been hurt…There had never been a time like this. Nobody was praying, nobody was singing.

But then almost miraculously, the atmosphere changed. Sheyann Webb takes up the story:

[A]ll of a sudden somebody there started humming. I think they were moaning and it just went into the humming of a freedom song…At first I didn’t even know what it was, what song, I mean. It was like a funeral sound, a dirge. Then I recognized it – Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round…it just started to catch on, and the people began to pick it up. It started to swell, the humming. We was singing and telling the world that we hadn’t been whipped, that we had won.

Just all of a sudden something happened that night and we knew in that church that – Lord Almighty – we had really won, after all. We had won!

Aftermath

And they had. The events of that afternoon, caught on television for the whole world to see, outraged public opinion. The clamour for equal voting rights became irresistible. Just a week later President Johnson announced that he would be sending a comprehensive Voting Rights Bill to Congress for approval. And on March 21st, under the protection of federal forces, Martin Luther King led a triumphant march of 4000 people out of Selma, and on the road towards Montgomery. It took them four days to reach the State Capitol, by which time the march had swelled in size until it numbered 25,000 people. In Montgomery, King gave one of the great speeches of his life, promising the assembled throng that black people were on the road to freedom.

Footnote

1. Many of the direct quotes in this article are from Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil-Rights Days by Frank Sikora, Sheyann Web & Rachel West Nelson.

©2009, Jeremy Stangroom.

Ramin Jahanbegloo has devoted his entire intellectual life to the project of fostering dialogue between different cultures and societies. However, in April 2006, his endeavours were brought to an abrupt, though temporary, end, after he was arrested and imprisoned by Iranian authorities when on his way to a conference in Belgium. His imprisonment provoked an international outcry. It seemed that he was being punished  – possibly even tortured – simply for his contact with the West. In May 2006, four hundred leading intellectuals, including Chomsky, Habermas and Rorty, signed a letter demanding his immediate release. However, it was not until the end of August that he was finally freed.

Despite this brush with what he says was “inhumanity” and “evil”, Jahanbegloo remains absolutely committed to the project of fostering dialogue and interconnections between human beings and cultures.

“The most important thing I got out of my own experience with evil and the inhuman is that one should not live in bitterness, but rather with a sense of humanity,” he tells me when we meet at the University of Toronto, where he has just become the Dean’s Distinguished Visitor in Human Rights. “One should always try to find ways of remaining ethical in the face of evil and to look for the humanity in the inhuman.”

This imperative to engage with the other, to always seek dialogue and points of connection, is a thread that runs through all his thoughts about the challenges of the modern world. For example, his notion of democracy is founded on the idea that it is necessary to engage with people in what he says is “a daily effort of interconnectedness, dialogue and tolerance”. According to Jahanbegloo, democracy is not simply a matter of safeguarding certain individual rights.

“I think the main goal of democracy is to reduce violence,” he says. “It is not enough simply to talk about rights. We have to add duties into the mix. This is how democracies will improve. If there is no way to talk about shared common values, if one is simply satisfied that these have been defined within a constitution, then things are not going to move forwards.”

The scope and effectiveness of dialogue, of course, is a hot topic at the moment. The processes of globalisation and mass migration of people have brought the West increasingly into contact with different traditions, and particularly with Islam. The “clash of civilisations” thesis holds that we’re likely dealing here with incommensurate beliefs and values, which will limit the usefulness of dialogue. I mention, as an example of the kind of event which suggests that there is little room for an accommodation between two divergent traditions, the row over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were published by the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.

“I do not believe that cultures clash per se,” Jahanbegloo responds. “The clash is between intolerant people within different cultures – it’s a clash of intolerances. The Danish cartoons example is certainly relevant here. The key thing is that whilst freedom of expression is a right in the West, there is no compulsion to act upon that right. Just because we have the right to do something does not mean that we should neglect our duties towards other people. In the Danish case, the clash is between different absolutists in different cultures. People who believe in moral and political pluralism practice their rights in a way that leaves space for others. It has to do with listening and learning. It is not about whether there is the right to publish the cartoons – constitutionally speaking, of course it is legitimate – it is about the fact that it is necessary to think about the consequences of one’s actions if one does not want to harm people, and that puts limits on free speech.”

The problem with this response is the standard thought that we should not be constrained in our actions and speech simply because some people happen to find some particular thing offensive. Supposing people are offended by literature featuring homosexuality, for example. Would this mean that it shouldn’t be published?

“I’m just saying that we have to look at our priorities,” says Jahanbegloo. “You don’t have to think against others to do a work of dissidence. There is no need to forget the other. If the Danish cartoons had been accompanied by an effort to make the Danes understand about Islam, then that would have been an important thing to do, but this didn’t happen. It was accompanied by a lot of prejudice towards Muslims. In Denmark, if you are a veiled woman, it is very hard to get a job. That is a prejudice.

“I would say that in our global world the issue of not harming other people is not just about rights. It also has to do with the problem of understanding each other. We live in an interconnected world, so if we want a better future, we have to be more aware of what we say and how we act.”

There is still the worry that Jahanbegloo is asking us to give up too much here. For example, the nature of religious identity means that I could potentially “harm” a Muslim just by talking about the Prophet Muhammad in a certain kind of way – perhaps by questioning the veracity of the Qur’an. Does this mean that I need to modify how I talk about Muhammad?

“Well, you have a responsibility to learn more about the Prophet Muhammad, that’s the first thing,” is the rather caustic reply. “Why should somebody talk about something they don’t know about? And why is it in always in a very satirical way. This is part of the process of demonization of the East by the West.”

This is not a particularly persuasive response. Take, for example, somebody like Ibn Warraq, who wrote the book Why I Am Not A Muslim. Unless the bar is set unreasonably high, he surely passes the knowledge test. So has he behaved badly by writing his more polemical books?

“It depends on the goals you have in speaking in a particular way,” says Jahanbegloo. “If the goal is to stop dialogue, and to hurt other people, then I would say that was not ethical. But if the goal is to reduce violence, then you need to consider how you’re going to engage with other people. Monologues do not make for a good dialogue. I would go back to the Socratic principle of engaging in a dialogue, and not just speaking in one direction.”

This seems to take us straight back to the problem of the radical incommensurability of beliefs and values. It is possible that there simply cannot be a dialogue about certain kinds of things. It is certainly very hard to imagine any real dialogue occurring if one wanted to write a book questioning whether Muhammad is a historical figure, for example. We’re not necessarily talking about scorn and derision here; perhaps just straightforward critical, historical enquiry.

“I take an Isaiah Berlin view about this,” Jahanbegloo tells me. “One can accept that there are plural values, but at the same time think that there is room for shared values or universal norms. I do think that whilst we might have some incommensurable  values in different cultures, there are also values that we share because we belong to one humanity:, for example, in all religions there is this idea that killing is wrong.”

Again, I think this response is too trite. It is certainly true that the Qur’an holds that killing certain kinds of people is bad. But it would be hard to argue that the Qur’an is particularly opposed to the killing of infidels, for example.

“But that depends on how you define infidels,” Jahanbegloo insists. “It depends on how you read philosophical and religious texts. I distinguish between soft reading and hard reading of texts. Fundamentalists are always those who read philosophical and religious texts in a hard way. But, on the other hand, there are those who have a soft reading of Islam; or take the Dalai Lama who has a very soft reading of religion in general.”

But however you read the Qur’an – and, sure, you can explain away the rather unfortunate passages about the Jews, for example, – it is very difficult to deny that  atheists and polytheists are subject to horribly violent sanctions. It doesn’t require a tendentious reading to come to that conclusion.

“Okay, but you had exactly the same problem in the West for many years. These things need to be discussed and resolved. Take John Locke’s Letter on Toleration: it’s interesting that he had no toleration for atheists. If we just focus on the fact that Christianity equals the inquisition, or that Judaism equals ultra-conservative Jews, then there is no way that you can have a dialogue among faiths and religions. We shouldn’t focus purely on the negative aspects of each organized religion. We also have to look at what people do with their beliefs. It is very interesting that in the twentieth century there were two ways of reading Christianity. You had Martin Luther King’s nonviolent way – you know, the Sermon on the Mount; and you had the ultra-conservative way of reading it, where it becomes almost hate speech.

“You find the same thing in Islam. The Taliban and al-Qaeda use the Qur’an for their own goals. They’re not interested in dialogue.”

There is a difference between Christianity and Islam, though. The West experienced a fairly profound Enlightenment period in the 18th Century. Of course, there was also an Islamic Enlightenment, but it was stamped out. There just hasn’t been this same process of mainstream, internal criticism. There is no equivalent in Islam of Voltaire or the Encyclopedists.

Jahanbegloo  is not convinced by what he sees as my overly negative portrayal of Islam.

“I really think there is a big problem with the way that you’re characterising Islam,” he tells me. “We have this tendency to judge Islam just in terms of the news and media – you know, all the rather shocking events. But it is the wrong thing to do. If we want to judge Islam, then we have to go back to its traditions and the history. If you look at Islamic history, you’ll find that there is an attempt to think about atheism and about how to live with different cultures, as for example in Andalusian Islam.

“In addition, I would say that amongst today’s Islamic pluralists, not just in Iran, but also in Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon, there is an effort to create a new Enlightenment. There are a great number of people with Islamic backgrounds trying to engage with this project. The West must try to engage them in dialogue, not simply isolate them by saying that they are just a small number of people. It is tough, but it was also tough in the West. You know, many people forget about the killing of Protestants in Europe. The Western tradition is taken for granted by Westerners. Nobody looks back at the effort it took to get you here.”

But surely this isn’t right. Part of the reason that some people in the West are exercised by this kind of thing is precisely because they don’t take the Enlightenment for granted. Isn’t this why we worry about the encroachment of religious authoritarianism?

“Well, it is certainly taken for granted by those people who just think that secular values are universal values, that they are the best values, and that these values alone should be employed in the political framework of Europe,” Jahanbegloo replies. “Take the situation in France for example: there are five million Muslims living there. They are not Arabs, they are French, and it is necessary to engage in dialogue with them. Look at the situation in Britain – the fact that some British Asians do not feel British and are attracted by fundamentalist views  is partly because they haven’t been engaged in dialogue, which has created what we might call mental ghettos. It is a huge problem. In most European countries, Muslims have been rejected, and they’ve been pushed towards the periphery.

“It goes back to the issue of how you educate people, how you engage with them. There is a need to be understood, to be taken into account. Does Europe want to be a continent of diversity or not? Do we have a monolithic view of Europe or a multicultural view? If you don’t engage the younger generation in the work of democracy, if you don’t help them to see themselves as citizens, then you increase the likelihood that they will be attracted by fundamentalist ideologies. It’s very important that Europe should have governments of dialogue. They have to be flexible towards the new issues and problems of the world – some of which have to do with multiculturalism and globalization.”

Jahanbegloo has always stressed the role of intellectuals in the project to deepen the connections between cultures and to bring about democratisation. I wonder how optimistic he is about their ability to achieve social change?

“The intellectuals in the Middle East could certainly play a very important role,” he tells me. “Priority number one is for them to engage in an inter-cultural dialogue. This is a philosophical and ethical imperative. It is important to embark upon this project before we think about the more pragmatic stuff. There is a tendency for governments just to think in terms of Realpolitik, and to ignore the possibility of a rich inter-cultural exchange. This is why I engage in this kind of dialogue: young people need to know more about the West.”

He explains that in Iran the dialogue with the West tends to take place within the institutions of civil society – in journals, artistic performances and intellectual settings. He is optimistic that this intellectual engagement with young people can drive social change.

“In the Middle East, intellectual ideas have always been effective in the process of modernization and democratization. Even in the Gulf States, the younger generation of people in governing bodies do not think the way their grandfathers used to think. They have a less tribal view of Islam, and a less feudal view of politics. The fact that today they engage culturally and politically in their societies shows that things are different. They don’t want to repeat what their grandfathers were doing.

“It’s likely that even Saudi Arabia will change. Certainly women’s organisations and associations are pushing for a liberalisation. Also, you should not underestimate the work of the trans-nationals – those people from Saudi or the UAE who live in London or who are studying or working there. They don’t just learn about British football or cricket. They also learn about the work of citizenship – about how to be a responsible citizen. Teaching tolerance and citizenship must be one of the priorities of democratic societies.”

I ask him whether his experience of being imprisoned has undermined his optimism?

“Absolutely not. It has helped me to understand that there is no way one can proceed or succeed with hatred, or resentment, or revenge. When you’re a prisoner in solitary confinement, especially if you’re a dissident, you do ask questions about why people need to humiliate each other in order to show their own greatness, which of course happens at all levels of politics. Somebody such as Gandhi didn’t need to humiliate people. He was always looking for the noble side of human beings. It was very important for him to engage in dialogue with the human behind the inhuman.

“Since we have been talking about freedom of speech, and individual rights, it bears saying that it isn’t possible to find meaning in the way we act and speak unless we take the other into account. Also, we need to think of our engagement with the other as a process of exchange, a way of going beyond the axis of monologue and prejudice that is created by those social, political and ideological ideas that stop our democratic engagement with other people and other cultures.”

This originally appeared in Issue 41 of The Philosophers’ Magazine.