Paul Russell, a professor of philosophy at both the University of British Columbia and Gothenberg University, has written a thoughtful piece at Aeon magazine that I commend to your attention: “The limits of tolerance.” Perhaps the thesis is self-evident to many of us—you can choose how tenaciously you hold your politics and religion, but not your gender and ethnicity—but it bears reading by those who zealously call out “Islamophobia” when Islam is criticized, or defend all religions against attack because, after all, it’s religion.

The thesis is based on the idea in this paragraph:

Some claim there is an analogy between the identity politics of religion and the issues that arise with other excluded groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and the like. What is supposed to hold these divergent identities together is that the groups in question have been treated unequally, or do not receive adequate recognition in the existing social and legal system. Religious groups require protection to secure their rights and recognition of their particular interests in practising their religion. Yet, however plausible these claims might be, there is a key distinction that needs to be made between identities that are based on what can be broadly described as ideological or value-laden commitments, and those that do not carry any such baggage. This distinction is essential to understanding the role of (religious) toleration in a liberal, democratic society.

What Russell means by “religious toleration” is not “refraining from criticism of faith”, but respecting the worth and dignity of others, and not demonizing them or depriving them of rights, but rather

.  . . acknowledging and accepting disagreement and ideological conflict. Religious tolerance does not, therefore, involve a commitment to affirming the equal worth and value of all doctrines and practices that fall within the scope and bounds of tolerance itself. With respect to religion, tolerance involves allowing and preserving a space for criticism as well as affirmation.

In other words, criticism of religion is valuable for the same reason the First Amendment is valuable: it allows the airing of all views under the assumption that some kind of socially salubrious consensus will emerge. Indeed, that is the content of America’s First Amendment: it implicitly allows free expression of religious criticism. If criticism of religion is deemed off limits (not by law but by people, as with some elements of the Right and Regressive Left), then it doesn’t disappear, but goes underground. That’s why I’m opposed to laws against “hate speech”: it doesn’t eliminate hate, but prevents it from being countered with better speech.

Russell’s point is not that criticism of race, gender, sexual orientation and so on should be banned, but rather that it can be dismissed as bigotry without the need for discussion.  Being Asian, white, or black,  transgender, gay, or female are not matters of choice, and there is no moral ground for demonizing someone for something they cannot change. This does not mean, though, that ideological positions based on these “non-ideological identities” don’t deserve open discussion, for they do, including matters like affirmative action, third-wave feminism, and so on.

This all rests on a crucial difference between religion and politics on the one hand, and things like gender and ethnicity on the other:

Race, gender and, more recently, sexual orientation are forms of identity that have been especially prominent in politics during the past century. What is striking about these forms of identity is not only that they are generally unchosen, but that they are not based on any ideological or value-laden set of commitments of a political or ethical nature. Of course, the significance and interpretation of non-ideological identities, the ways in which they can be viewed as threatened or disrespected, is itself an ideological matter; but the identities themselves are not constituted by any ideological content (systems of belief, value, practices, etc), and the groups concerned could vary greatly in the particular ideologies that they endorse or reject.

For this reason, there is no basis for criticising a group (or individual member of it) on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation. It would, for example, be absurd to praise or blame Martin Luther King Jr for being black, or Margaret Thatcher for being a woman. There is no ideological content to their identity to assess or debate – the relevant identity is an inappropriate target for praise or blame, since there are no relevant assessable beliefs, values, practices or institutions to serve as the grounds of such responses. The identity of the group turns on natural qualities and features that cannot be discarded in light of critical scrutiny or reflection of any kind.

With ideological or value-laden identities the situation is different. The most obvious of these identities are political, constituted by doctrines, beliefs and values that have implications for our social and ethical practices and institutions. The crucial question for tolerance, is: where does religion stand in relation to this divide? Religious identities are, I contend, heavily ideological and value-laden and, in this respect, more akin to political identities than to those based on race, gender or sexual orientation.

This difference is not just a matter of religion being subject to choice, as the roots and sources of religious identity are generally more complicated and complex than this. A person’s identity as Christian, Muslim, atheist and so on might, to a great extent, be a product of culture, education, socialisation and even indoctrination of various, overlapping kinds. What really matters is not so much that the person’s particular religious identity is chosen but that it has some relevant ideological content and is, to that extent, sensitive to criticism, reflection, discussion and debate. Religious identities, like political identities, however they might be acquired, can still be discarded or radically amended: they are not natural features that a person is incapable of revising. You might be born into a Catholic family, brought up a Catholic, have spent most of your days among Catholics, but that doesn’t mean you can’t at some point discard this religious identity.

This, then, is the distinction between, say, bigotry against Muslims and criticism of Islam—something that many of the Left fail to grasp—or deliberately ignore. In politics as in religion, not all ideologies are equally good or bad, and how do you sort this out without freedom to criticize? (Again, we’re talking about social opprobrium here, not legal strictures.) If that freedom is denied, religious tolerance in fact diminishes, as people are either forced into stifling views they still hold, or are mentally lumped together with genuine bigots, like those on the Right who really are prejudiced against Muslim people.

Russell’s article is long and nuanced, and discusses many issues and caveats that I can’t go into here. One, though, is the matter of “fused” identities: the case of someone having both ideological and nonideological components to their identity, like a practicing Muslim whose identity was based on the country of birth that promoted her faith, or on a common language like Farsi or Arabic. Russell still argues that the main component of a religious identity is ideological, but we have to be careful in how we handle this. With Islam, the label “Islamophobia” is the worst way to do that:

These general considerations concerning fused identities are obviously relevant to the issue of religious tolerance. Among other things, they make clear why labels such as ‘Islamophobia’ – however well-motivated – are problematic and confuse issues that should be carefully distinguished. Terminology of this kind leaves the nature and content of the identity in question unsettled and indeterminate in crucial respects. It encourages the view that criticism of the Muslim religion, as such, should be assimilated to forms of racism and sexism. Until the ‘Muslim’ identity in question is carefully unpacked, the case for grouping any and all such criticism under the heading ‘Islamophobia’ is itself dangerous and intolerant, as it encourages the suppression of reasonable and legitimate debate and discussion about the merits and demerits of Islam.

And, as we all know, it is the Left and not the Right that has genuinely failed to recognize the nuance here. After all, it is the Huffington Post, not Breitbart, that has a section called “Islamophobia,” a section that regularly labels valid criticism as bigotry. Here are the dangers of that approach:

It is essential that the Left – Old or New, along with whatever particular identities it might want to draw on – carefully distinguish these issues of tolerance and religious identity. As long as the Left continues to conflate and confuse these issues and presents (legitimate) forms of criticism and condemnation of religion as unacceptable forms of bigotry and racism, it will be the enemy of genuine religious tolerance and effectively play into the hands of the real bigots and racists, who are happy to use the language of religious tolerance to conceal their hate-fuelled agendas.

We cannot hold back from criticizing ideologies that we consider objectionable simply because those who hold them are deemed “marginalized”. We know that’s why so many on the Left are happy to say palpably false things like Islam is “empowering for women” or is “the most feminist of all religions”, while at the same time happily go after Republicans, for Republicans don’t adhere to a given ethnic group or gender. (It’s interesting to ponder what the Left would do if most blacks were Republicans, but that’s a non-issue because the nature of the Right and the self-interest of African- Americans prevents such a circumstance.)

But all this still leaves one question unanswered: if religion and politics are both largely ideological in nature, why is religion in general seen as something that shouldn’t be criticized but politics can be? I welcome readers’ answers below.

Anyone who criticizes religion, as have people like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins or even a small fish like me, quickly learns that you arouse rancor in many on the Left, and they’ll find lots of irrelevant reasons, like “excessive stridency”, to dismiss your arguments. It’s not okay to say that “Christianity is bunk”, but fine to say that “the Republican platform is bunk.” Yet politics is as much a part of a person’s identity and self-image as is faith, so that can’t explain the difference. I remain stymied.  

But read Russell’s essay; there’s much food for thought.