Jonah’s column this morning offers much food for thought. There is one point on which I disagree with him, though. Let me work my way round to it.

First, the business of the Darwin Fish. This is essentially an issue of manners. I covered it as best I could in this column last year. My argument started from the rule, which I learned in childhood, that it is bad manners to mock another person’s faith. I then argued that this rule, like every other social rule, is operational only within certain limits, and that:

If, at the core of your religious faith, there is an obviously preposterous belief about the physical world; and if I point out that it is preposterous, and that if you make it known that you believe preposterous things about the physical world, you may reasonably expect to be mocked; then I have attacked your faith. I don’t see any way around this.

So is the Darwin fish ill-mannered? I think it is, but only because it equates Christiainty with Creationism. Most Christians aren’t Creationists, and to imply that they are is wrong-headed, tarring the many with the foolishness of the few. I can’t truthfully say, as Jonah does, that I find the Darwin fish offensive, but I do think it’s ignorant (i.e. of the fact that most Christians aren’t Creationists) and ill-mannered (i.e. towards non-Creationist Christians).

The problem I have with Jonah’s column is that he then proceeds to accuse the Darwin-fisherfolk of hypocrisy and cowardice. Hypocrisy, because they are, judging from their other bumper stickers, the same folk who are always trying to stuff “tolerance” and “diversity” down our throats. Cowardice, because they are after cheap grace. They wouldn’t dare, says Jonah, sport a symbol correspondingly offensive to Muslims.

To the first, it is human nature to be more excited by the sins of others in our tribe, than by whatever it is that folk get up to in that different tribe over in the next valley. No fight is as bitter as a family fight. Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics have stronger emotions towards each other than either has towards Buddhists or Zoroastrians.

The kind of person who puts a Darwin fish on his bumper is asserting status against other members of his tribe (i.e. white Americans). So far as the goings-on in other tribes are concerned, he may have almost any opinion at all — it’s an orthogonal issue. He may think Muslims are misunderstood and just need some TLC; or he may think they should be nuked. Neither opinion is incompatible with a Darwin-fish sticker. (Though since, as I have to keep reminding people, Islamic fundamentalists are Creationists to a man, the second opinion is a bit more compatible than the first.)

The guy driving that car with the Darwin-fish sticker might, in other words, spend his spare time editing an Islamophobic magazine or organizing private screenings of Fitna. I’ve had a fair exposure to Islamophobia, and it has two strands:

  • Nonreligious people who think all religion is a bit nutty, but that Islam is nutty in unacceptably dangerous ways.
  • Christians and Jews who think Islam is a dangerous heresy.

I think all the Big Four atheist writers who have been getting our attention this past year or two — Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris — have been outspoken about Islam. Any one of them might very well have a Darwin fish sticker on his bumper.

On a balance of probabilities, it is of course true that a Darwin-fish-bumper-sticker-displayer is likely to have gentler views about Islam than someone sporting a JESUS SAVES sticker. But that’s a wash, since lots of powerful and important Christian leaders, like the Archbishop of Canterbury, are as hypocritical and cowardly as you please about militant Islam.

The divide is thus not between brave, clear-thinking Christians who speak out fearlessly against the jihadists, and cringing, wishy-washy secularists welcoming their new overlords and embracing dhimmitude. The divide is between people who think jihadism is crazy and dangerous, and those who don’t; and both groups include lots of Christians and Jews, and also lots of secularists.

Some of the secularists in the first group think all religion is crazy, and mock Christianity — the dominant religion of their tribe, and therefore the one they get most satisfaction from mocking — with the Darwin fish. Some of the Christians in the second group think jihadis are just errant children of God, and can be won over with sweet reason.

In any case, my main point of disagreement with Jonah is the implication in his piece that I should not engage in intra-tribal mockery, even of the borderline ill-mannered kind, until I have first made a clear declaration of my attitude toweards the hostile tribe in the next valley. Does everybody have to have an opinion about everything? Well, the writers of opinion columns should, of course, but I don’t believe ordinary citizens should be under the same obligation.