Identity, Islam and the Twilight of Liberal Values (2018), Terri Murray
Abstract
A book review of Terri Murray’s 2018 Identity, Islam and the Twilight of Liberal Values, in which I argue that the author’s arguments are strong when discussing film and the pitfalls of censorship, but are too reductive and lack rigour when discussing the tensions between liberalism and Islam.
Introduction
I have enjoyed reading Terri Murray’s insightful readings of films through different philosophical lenses for over a decade. So, upon receiving a copy of her 2018 Identity, Islam and the Twilight of Liberal Values, I was eager to hear her contribution to contemporary socio-political discourse. Overall, however, I found it to be a frustrating read. It seemed to be collection of observations and gripes bolted together (evidenced through the scattered page references below), as opposed to a clearly developed narrative. Murray has drawn upon her numerous online articles in compiling the text, and that is apparent in its repetitive and rant-ish tone.
Overview
Murray positions herself as a liberal thinker after the tradition of the Enlightenment; in effect, that reason trumps all other forms of knowledge creation and articulation (see Anja Steinbauer’s ‘Sapere Aude!’). In other words, may the best arguments win. So far, so good. Murray differentiates her brand of modern, quasi-socialist liberalism from neoliberalism (p. 182), and helpfully differentiates between her liberal multiculturalism, and plural multiculturalism (pp. 133–134), whereby the latter is no more than a pernicious cultural relativism; in effect, ‘each to their own’. Murray argues that political liberalism is on the wane, and has been replaced by a neoliberal, socially conservative version (p.3), that has lamentably popularised illiberal discourse. The latter is emblematised in Murray’s text by Islamism: ‘a socio-political system which advocates an expansionist Islamic state governed by Sharia law’ (p.42). Her gambit is that the ‘pro-Islamist Left’ (p.42) has been gullible in accepting a mythical conflation of Islam with Islamism.
Islam
Murray argues that ‘religious ideas are chosen’, and that they ‘imply moral content and consequences for others’, rendering them ‘fair game for public scrutiny and criticism’ (p. 184). With this, I, as I’m sure pretty much all readers will, agree. Murray rightly asserts that generalisations about ‘all Muslims’ are ignorant (p. 32), but that ‘generalisations about all critics of Islamic religious ideology’ (p. 32) have become the norm. This begs the question as to who is putting these critics into the same box? This reductive claim, which requires greater exploration, is unfortunately an all too apparent pattern in Murray’s discussions concerning Islam.
Murray claims that apologists for Islamists defend ‘their intolerance towards other ways of life a ‘‘‘culture’’’ (p. 21). She later simplistically groups the Eastern religions of Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam as ‘cultures’ (p. 173), in which individual rights are always secondary to the social collective. It is these kinds of sweeping statements that reduce the efficacy of the richer points Murray may have to contribute. Her main gripe is with (Eastern) ‘cultural opposition to the West’ (p. 27). This supposes that there is such a thing as a homogenous Western culture, as well as uniformity in ‘other’ (ipso facto Eastern) cultures. This crude distinction ignores the fact that many aspects of ‘Western’ culture, such as the Scientific method, astronomy, higher education, music and the arts, linguistics, and all manner of human creativity and ingenuity have Eastern inflections. Murray’s reductive thesis, à la Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations (1993), has little to helpfully contribute to the discourse surrounding tensions between liberal democracy and Eastern religions. That said, Murray does demonstrate nuance two thirds into the text, arguing that ‘we’ — a clear marker that she has succumbed, perhaps unwittingly, to a reductionist ‘us’ and ‘them’ tirade — must ‘bear in mind the hypocrisies and global political crimes committed by our own regimes’ (p. 135).
In her discussions concerning Islam, Murray name checks contemporary US religious scholar Reza Aslan once, but is advised to consult his works in greater depth. Murray describes Aslan as a ‘vehement defender of Islam’, (p. 43), omitting the fact that he is also a vehement defender of freedom of speech to the, as he describes it, ‘absolute’. Conceding as much would hamper Murray’s arguments against the compatibility of freedom of expression, tolerance and Islam. Murray states that she has misgivings about the plasticity of Islam owing to an apparent sanction on freedoms to debate or critique it. That said, the very fact that she has published this text, and is amongst a slew of recent authors, including Ricard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens, who pull no punches in their criticisms of Islam and have/were all published and widely read best-sellers, suggests that Murray is hardly a persecuted minority. Murray seems to have a siege mentality, which prevents her from recognising that Islam often is contested, debated and criticised, not least of all within by religious scholars — again, Aslan being a case in point.
A siege mentality leads Murray to make a number of sensational claims. For example, she argues that 2015 ‘marked the first time in modern history that the Western liberal establishment defended the violent murder of journalists’, when the likes of the Pope (hardly a beacon of liberalism), to leftist social commentator Will Self, reminded ‘us’ that freedom of speech entails responsibilities and has consequences. How the latter sanctions the former is absurd. This, unfortunately, is not an isolated case of an absurd leap. Murray argues that the apparent pro-Islamist leftist media lamented that the real victims of 2017’s Manchester Arena suicide bombing to be Muslims (p.64), and that ‘stigmatizing Muslims is treated as far more problematic than blowing apart innocent peoples’ bodies and limbs’ (p.172). These are remarkable claims, which raise the question of what media Murray was/is consuming? Upon reading Murray’s claims, I checked the post-Manchester attack headlines of all major national newspapers in the UK (and some from the USA): they were unanimous in their message, echoing that of the most-read newspaper in the UK, The Metro, which declared ‘terror carnage at arena concert’. Moreover, in response to a post-Brexit referendum rise in anti-Muslim hate-crimes in the UK (which Murray claims is over estimated), Murray argues that in some attacks, there were no hospital treatments required (p.64). The crude nature of the last ‘argument’ merits little further discussion.
Identity
Murray is vehemently opposed to identity politics, insofar as it apparently reduces people to their culture over their individuality (p. 137, as though the two could be completely separate!). She deems identity politics as reducing individuals to a quasi-oppression Olympics. However, identity politics is arguably rather self-evident: it is emblematic of what it means to be a socially embedded subject. I was surprised to not see Theodor W. Adorno referenced in the text any earlier than the very last page, for he would have provided Murray with a critical toolkit to employ when engaging with the problems of post-Enlightenment, liberal, individualism. For example, Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/1947) is sorely missing from this debate.
For
I find Murray to, unsurprisingly, be at her strongest when critiquing contemporary Left-ish discourse through the lens of film. She insightfully reads The Last Supper (1995) as a warning of the dangers of a potential slippery slope, of what begins as censorship by leftists, to murder of those that have different views to them. Advocating tolerance, Murray rightfully argues that it entails being able ‘to withstand offensive views’ (p. 116), and ‘aims at structural equality’ (p.117). With this, I wholeheartedly agree. Chapter ten (pp. 144–157) on issues of transgenderism is very well argued, and along with her wider critique of the dangers of censorship, dogmatic hero worship (leftists idealising the legacy of Barack Obama) and victim baiting, Murray certainly has some useful ideas to contribute to contemporary socio-political discourse.
Conclusion
As Murray states, in a social context in which ‘we are free to argue back, poor arguments ought to give the least worry’ (p.106). This is ironic, as in the tradition of a great Coen brothers black comedy, Murray is clearly worried about the supposed ‘hijacking’ of a great liberal tradition by leftist Islamist apologists, and I am worried about the lack of nuance of her reading of liberalism in relation to Islam! She asserts, correctly so, I think, that ideas ‘cannot be eternally fixed to particular nations, people or eras’ (p. 188). But this begs the question as to why she has spent the preceding near 200 pages arguing against what she deems the erosion of liberal values by social conservatism and a lack of plasticity of Islam? Hermeneutics and critique of Islam is not Murray’s strong suit. Instead, for a much more nuanced reading of tensions between liberalism and Islam, readers are advised to consult Aslan’s insightful 2010 Beyond Fundamentalism. Concerning Murray, readers are advised to consult her numerous online articles and blog entries instead of this text, which is far too choppy, ranty and repetitive to be worth recommending.
Sunny Dhillon has managed, for the first time ever, to not mention Nietzsche in one of his book reviews. He feels a ‘bad conscience’ for it.
