England's Secular Scripture by Carruthers Jo;

Author:Carruthers, Jo; [Carruthers, Jo;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

THE PROTESTANT AESTHETIC AND ISLAMOPHOBIA

As an essentially oppositional aesthetic, simplicity produces dispositions that eschew the ornamented, and because of expectations of transparency (that bestow on the observer rationality and self-control), they reject the non-simple in moral and ethical terms: ostentatious people who are oblivious to the beauty of simplicity are undiscriminating. Unable to discern, they lack rationality and the perspective needed to control unruly passions and impulses. As Scruton implies, those who do not understand the beauty of the simple are ridiculous, but also potentially dangerous in their circulation of spurious ideas. This chapter considers Islamophobia as a phenomenon that is the outworking of English simplicity’s oppositional impulse. I use the term Islamophobia quite self-consciously as a term that foregrounds the non-rational as the discussion is focused on the siting of anti-Islamic prejudice, the phobia, within an unconscious aesthetic register. Its commonly cited definition from the report by the Runnymede Trust Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, Islamophobia: A Challenge for us All, is: ‘a shorthand way of referring to dread or hatred of Islam – and, therefore, to fear or dislike of all or most Muslims’, which highlights viscerality – dread and hatred – although the substantial analysis of the report is focused on rationalized prejudice.1 This chapter considers a range of Islamophobic articulations to consider how the aesthetics and dispositions of Englishness – based on the aesthetic of simplicity outlined in the previous three chapters – informs the specific construction of rejected Muslim identities. I look at a sample of anti-Islamic sentiment in interviews, newspapers and Martin Amis’s collection of writings on 9/11, The Second Plane, that all show how Islam is constructed as an externalized and elaborate religion in opposition to English simplicity’s guarantee of interiorization, honesty, rationality and control. Islamophobia is shown to be motivated by aesthetic, rather than rational, concerns. Although sometimes couched in the language of rational and reasonable discussion, anti-Islamic sentiment is often the expression of a more visceral response to Muslims that taps into a set of seemingly wide-ranging stereotypes.

The 1997 Runnymede Trust’s Islamophobia: A Challenge for us All, begins with the discussion of a British naval officer’s rhetorical question: ‘Where would you pray to Mecca on a submarine?’ (p. 1).2 The comment, although recognized as ‘presumably some sort of joke’, is considered representative and the report goes on to combat, in general terms, the officer’s evident ignorance of Muslim prayer and, in more empirical terms, specific ignorance of the British merchant navy’s dependence on so-called ‘lascars’, Muslim seamen, during the Second World War. The report concludes its short discussion by speculating that ‘What the officer presumably had in mind, alas, was a notion that it is inappropriate for British Muslims to play a part in defending their country since Britain is not really, he believes, their country. They therefore cannot be expected, he believes further, to be loyal to it.’ The report identifies a possible set of negative beliefs behind the officer’s comment, yet the statement is more telling of the officer’s assumptions and attitude than the report reveals.

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