My parents, both born towards the end of the first world war, were racist bigots without being ideological. My mother, who grew up in what is now Bangladesh, liked and felt comfortable around "brown people", though she felt that the natural order was for them to be ruled by white people like her parents. She was frightened and distressed by black people – by the mere fact of their existence. Family legend has it that when she learned my sister had found a black boyfriend at Oxford she fainted in the Waitrose car park.
My father grew up in Belfast at a time when a "black protestant" was merely an unusually bigoted (or principled) white man. Not knowing any black or for that matter Asian people did not diminish his dislike and distrust of them in the least. Many years later, when he was running the personnel department of a British shipping company, he explained to me that the unions' insistence on equal pay for equal work even when done by Malayan seamen had nothing to do with humanitarian sentiments: it was a racist attempt to keep white people's jobs out of the hands of non-whites; and while he took a sour satisfaction in seeing humanitarian pretensions exploded, he also sympathised and approved of their real, nasty motives.
I'm telling this baldly because there's no point in outrage. They weren't unusually bad people. They were wrong. I loved them anyway. Perhaps our grandchildren will be just as shocked by us.
The other point to this story is that my parents made no effort to transmit these attitudes to their children. Obviously some were unconsciously transmitted, but they also simultaneously fed us consciously and deliberately with the bright middle-class pieties that said they were wicked old dinosaurs.
As a rather literal-minded child, I took the explicit, public message and largely missed the subliminal one. I had black friends among the diplomats' children in Lausanne one summer when I was six. We played with the gypsies in Yugoslavia. As teenagers, my sister and I spent a lot of moral outrage on our parents' racist attitudes and in those arguments they always conceded to us the moral high ground, as they did not when we argued about drugs or politics or anything else.
One phrase in particular summed up this curious double-mindedness and misunderstanding. My father used to refer sometimes to "our coloured brethren", and I remember distinctly taking the phrase entirely literally in Lausanne, and thinking that it meant we were all member of one human family. I couldn't understand why anyone would disagree with this; I certainly couldn't understand why, if they did, they would use the phrase.
I suppose I was in my 30s, living in a multicultural London, before I remembered the phrase again, and this time its real and unpleasant meaning was apparent. How could I ever have missed it, I wondered.
One answer, of course, is that it had often been used and had originated in its ostensible sense. Google books throws up thousands of 19th-century examples in which it is used to mean "black people, who should be treated as human beings". But once it had become a leftwing cliche it was repurposed as a rightwing sneer. By the end of the American civil war, "man-and-brotherism" was being used as a derogatory term for the anti-slavery movement. The original meaning is now almost impossible to recover or rehabilitate, though some people still mean something like it when they talk about "brothers and sisters".
I have been thinking about it again this week, but not because of Stephen Lawrence. Rather, there was an eruption of trolls using the phrase "the religion of peace" in comments to Remi Adekoya's article about Nigeria. This is a catchphrase of the American Islamophobic networks around Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller. Spencer in particular uses the phrase, as my father did, "our coloured brethren", to express the exact opposite of its ostensible meaning. This usage is neither irony nor sarcasm. It is just jeering. Like "our coloured brethren", "the religion of peace" has become a phrase that cannot be used without bad faith, and should be recognised as such.
From Forward.com – All
From CNN Belief Blog
Comments
10 January 2012 9:14AM
I'm no conoisseur of US right-wing Islamophobic web-sites. When I hear the term 'religion of peace,' it reminds me that, like all holy books, one can find whatever message one wants within the Koran. It'd be a shame to lose that perspective, just because of some Fox-newsish numb-skulls in America.
10 January 2012 9:14AM
So who's the author?
10 January 2012 9:15AM
Christianity is just as prone to violence and war, if not more.
As a Christian I wouldn’t find it offensive if someone jeeringly referred to Christianity as a ‘religion of peace’.
I’m not sure it is as bad as ‘our coloured brethren’
10 January 2012 9:15AM
We're not allowed to say that Islam isn't the religion of peace because that would be racist/Islamophobic.
And we're not allowed to say it is the religion of peace because if we did we are clearly being ironic, and therefore racist/islamophobic.
Right then!
10 January 2012 9:16AM
By Muslims?
www.islamicity.com/mosque/uiatm/un_islam.htm
www.dislam.org
10 January 2012 9:18AM
Translation - There were a lot of people who disagreed with the article who siad so.
10 January 2012 9:19AM
Excellent. And very pertinent for CIF .The term "The religion of peace" was posted here in panic at times... especially when the overwhelmingly non violent protests last year looked dangerously as if the term had real merit.
B
10 January 2012 9:19AM
There ought to be a word for what you're describing: the adoption and use of a seemingly favourable, sympathetic phrase or word but which is used with the intention of irony. As you show, it's highly dependent on context, requiring an audience of people who sympathise with the irony. It has two targets: the original group of people so described and those who coined or used the phrase in the first place with sympathetic intentions.
Apart from saying 'ironic use'...I can't think of a specific word from 'Rhetoric' that quite catches it. I suppose the highly technical phrase 'smug bastard' possibly catches a flavour of it...
10 January 2012 9:20AM
Liberal papers started using the phrase right after 9/11, in a weird stand against reality. Is it any wonder it's become a mocking phrase?
10 January 2012 9:21AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:21AM
Tell that to Dalil Boubakeur, mufti of the Paris Mosque, who said, "The prophet did not found a terrorist religion, but a religion of peace."
Tell it to Mahathir bin Mohamad, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia who said, “Clearly Islam the religion is not the cause of terrorism. Islam, as I said, is a religion of peace."
Slightly more nuanced, Pope Benedict XVI refused to agree that Islam was a religion of peace. However he stated: “It certainly contains elements that can favor peace, it also has other elements: We must always seek the best elements."
I do not believe a religion founded, and subsequently promulgated, by violent conquest, and which to this day inflicts violent cruel and unusual punishments on lawbreakers for "crimes" that many of us do not even consider to be offences (like adultery) can seriously be called a religion of peace.
I applaud your efforts to stop anyone suggesting otherwise.
10 January 2012 9:22AM
Pakistan bus explosions kills 25 (todays Guardian)
Church attacks in Nigeria leave at least 27 worshippers dead (7th Jan 2011)
Islamists kill dozens in Nigeria Christmas bombs (news 25th dec)
List of suicide bombings in Iraq in 2010 (wiki) (40+ attacks)
Dozens Of Bodies Scattered After Deadly Bombings In Afghanistan (news Dec 6th 2011 at least 50 dead in attack on Shiite mosque in Kabul)
Twin car bombings in Afghanistan 'leave several dead' (27th Aug 2011)
And where, Mr Brown, are the Islamic voices condemning these attacks? Perhaps the ironic use of the phrase "The religion of peace" is merely a reflection of the fact that the majority of people who read these headlines do not consider the different sects of Islam to be capable of uniting in peace.
10 January 2012 9:23AM
I think you are right Andrew - the phrase is only ever used mockingly.
But then how many of the core tenets of religions are only ever used ritualistically? Where your parents' prejudices displayed all the baggage of colonialism and exploitation, the moral high ground claimed by the pious is really just a baggage of phrases, of practised oaths.
So it is with religious texts. They no more encourage an honest moral consciousness than getting a roaring tiger tattoo makes a person brave. It's all for show.
10 January 2012 9:24AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:24AM
You are allowed to say it. But if you say it when the sewage system in Baghdad is being rearranged or when Merkevas are flattening Muslim's homes you will be seen as being very selective in your irony.
B
10 January 2012 9:25AM
well at least it was waitrose think of the embarrassment if it had been Lidl
10 January 2012 9:25AM
And why was it a leftwing cliche?
Because the left default to any anti-western cause perhaps?
10 January 2012 9:26AM
Actually, that's not correct Andrew, it was a claim repeated often by Muslims (here for example) and Islamophiles, even here on CiF.
The reason it has taken off as a jeer at Islam is because so often it's not lived up too by some Muslims, for example when they bomb other Muslims or are busily engaged in killing others 'in the name of Islam', which is usually the context in which the claim is made by certain apologists for the violence.
So when others call Islam '\the religion of peace', it's not really bad faith, just sarcasm. If anyone can be said to be acting in bad faith when they call Islam a 'religion of peace' it would have to be someone using the phrase as an apologist for violence conducted by Muslims 'in the name of Islam'.
10 January 2012 9:26AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:29AM
The Koran (and Hadith) records violence being used, and advocated, by Mohammed, where in the Bible does Christ make anything like similar assertions? You statement is relativist nonsense.
10 January 2012 9:31AM
Pace the author's public struggle session in this article, are we being warned that 'religion of peace' is henceforth anathema to CiF moderators?
Perhaps it were better to avoid any discussion of the irenic qualities of Islam, just to be on the safe side?
10 January 2012 9:31AM
What a spendid article! I'd quite forgotten that phrase "Our coloured breathren". I don't recall my parents using it but I remember the sneering version of it being in currency in the 1960s when I was a child. Clever of Andrew Brown to spot the similarities in the use of the 'Religion of Peace' by those who are hostile to Muslims.
10 January 2012 9:32AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:33AM
"Family legend has it that when she learned my sister had found a black boyfriend at Oxford she fainted in the Waitrose car park."
Your mother's behaviour was not unusual in this respect.
Many other women ,both white and black would have reacted in a similar way, although perhaps not in a supermarket car park.
The reason is, of course, the fear of having mixed race grandchildren, who might be confused over their identity, and maybe face a lifetime of discrimination in society.
10 January 2012 9:34AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:36AM
I see Muslims referred to as ROPers (i.e. Religion of Peace-ers) on some UK websites.
10 January 2012 9:36AM
It's called the religion of peace ironically, and rightly.
Given the scale of violence and brutality associated with the religion - the state and local murders of apostates, homosexuals, Christians - the appalling abuse of women - then it's almost impossible to fully and correctly condemn it in plain language.
If any organisation on earth other than a religion had done half - no, a millionth - of what Islam had done we wouldn't even be discussing it as anything other than a harm-reduction issue.
10 January 2012 9:38AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:38AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:39AM
"My parents ... were racist bigots "
What an appalling thing to say about one's parents. That in itself is a thoroughly bigoted attitude.
10 January 2012 9:40AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:40AM
You are aware that Islam is not a race right? It's actually beyond terrifying that The Guardian and its writers care more amount some faux offence rather than the actual attrocities carried out in the name of Islam. What makes things worse, is that it is always some pompous middle class white lefty that makes these statements, very rarely a muslim themselves. Just because you say something is or should be offensive, does not make it so. This sanctimonious and patronsing crap does not help muslims in any way.No wonder your readership is in the toilet. People are just sick and tired of this crap.
10 January 2012 9:41AM
Using the expression "religion of peace" in a sneering or mocking way to mean exactly the opposite can only work if the majority of people understand the joke.
If the majority of people understand the joke, it implies that they have some sympathy with the idea that islam is not a particularly peaceful religion.
Why on earth should that be, I wonder?
10 January 2012 9:44AM
Some phrases are 'hot button' words. They carry so much extra meaning that they change from one meaning into the opposite meaning over time, yet most people know the meaning in use by the context in which it is used.
The 'n' word (I feel disinclined to write it out in full) is so bad that few western white people will use it, yet it is used as a term of familiarity by street wise young men of a certain culture.
If you listen carefully you may hear particular words and phrases being bent into new meanings. 'Political Correctness', 'Multiculturism', 'Health and Safety' are all beginning to be tainted with a meaning of overblown concern. 'Feminism' is terribly confused in meaning. 'Atheism' is still close to its original meaning of godless criminal but is working towards 'a person who is free of god', and 'Religious' is beginning to pick up overtones of 'unthinking and unreflective' rather than 'godly behaviour'. Your own understanding of these words may vary...
Waitrose car park? How bizarre.
10 January 2012 9:44AM
Sounds like the kind of progress the Arab world needs hey?
10 January 2012 9:45AM
"As teenagers, my sister and I spent a lot of moral outrage on our parents' racist attitudes and in those arguments they always conceded to us the moral high ground, as they did not when we argued about drugs or politics or anything else"
Really? As teenagers my sister and I were more interested in smoking fags, sex, pop music and alcohol and skipping school.
10 January 2012 9:46AM
1. A word search reveals that the phrase "religion of peace" was used only once on the Remi Adekoya thread.
2. It is regrettable that Andrew should characterize those of us who make a reasoned case as to why the core teachings of Islam do not promote peace as "trolls".
10 January 2012 9:46AM
"This is a catchphrase of the American Islamophobic networks"
Islamophobia is a catch phrase of the Muslim Brotherhood
10 January 2012 9:48AM
Ah, yes, religions - easy to fear, difficult to respect.
10 January 2012 9:48AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:48AM
Article quotes:-
"My parents' racism taught me to beware jeering catchphrases"
"Rather, there was an eruption of trolls"
Nuff z
10 January 2012 9:49AM
The Christians marching into Poland had Gott Mitt Uns on their belts. It was not in the name of Christianity but the Nazis certainly used God to motivate the troops. However I wonder how Muslims saw it. A Christian army attacking a Christian Army. Do you think they thought Christianity was the religion of peace ?
B
10 January 2012 9:49AM
Beautiful. I'm adding it to "religions - they can't all be right but they can all be wrong".
10 January 2012 9:50AM
davesays, you ask with regard to a range of attacks, including one on a Shiite mosque:
Presumably the survivors of the attack, and relatives of the dead, would have been among the many Muslims condeming the attack! Of course, many, but not all, Muslims do condemn terrorist attacks.
In reality, in most social groups - black, white, Muslim, Christian, atheist, keen gardeners or whatever - some people can be found who are generally altruistic and broadminded, some who are usually villainous with the odd good moment and most who are somewhere in between. Cultures and ideologies too often contain pro-social and anti-social elements, and it is helpful to acknowledge the good (or good intentions) when criticising what one regards as bad. Crude generalisations are risky.
10 January 2012 9:50AM
I see that this thread has brought out the experts in Islam who seem to think that out of the world's religions it needs to be selected as an example of having inspired people to be belligerent.
So, taking a slice of world history - let's say since the year 1000 - how do the world's religions line up in terms of being the apparent inspiration for intolerant behaviour, discrimination, violence, war etc? (I say 'apparent' because lefty atheists like me think that are always 'underlying causes')
Even so, do the experts in Islam here rate the adherents of Islam particularly guilty in this respect over the last 1000 years? Other possibilities are coming to mind for me at the moment but I don't want to prejudice the enquiry...
10 January 2012 9:50AM
"However I wonder how Muslims saw it. "
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was thrilled by it.
10 January 2012 9:51AM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
10 January 2012 9:56AM
By saying 1000 years you are deliberately muddying the waters. Yes we all know about the Inquisition, but Europe, and by extention, Christianity passed through an enlightement period that the "Muslim world" didn't..
How about the last 10 years? How about this week?
10 January 2012 9:56AM
In the States the term 'coloured' to describe a Black person is perfectly sound. There are several Black organisations there with 'colored' in their name. Like The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Only upon returning to England, after spending some time in the States, did I get pulled-up for using it - by a white liberal, of course. When I asked him about its etymology and why it was offensive, he couldn't really give me an answer. Again, it just confirmed my belief in the silly groupthink and bullshit arbitrary nature of what most liberals deem to be offensive.
10 January 2012 9:59AM
Is this a bit like when Labour gets called 'a political party of the left'?