Thinking Culture

Just to update my previous post: it seems that the Anglican Archbishop of Perth, Roger Herft, while making an argument about the ordination of women within that church, has also contributed some comments about the Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly controversy. It is heartening to see a potential expansion of the terms of the debate as Herft has pointed to similar views within the Christian faith, and in 'secular ideologies portrayed in the degrading view of the "shiela"'. See here for more details.

UPDATE: I've been having somewhat circuitous and heated discussions on other blogs about this issue, and I have done some further reading, including locating a transcript of the Mufti's sermon. Having read through it, I think that my original post remains adequate, although it was based only on reported speech in other articles. As Jodi has rightly pointed out in conversation, this is a translation, with all of the attendant problems. Also one political aspect of it that I failed to mention was the reference to 65 year sentences. I think the most difficult thing for a white middle-class Australian reader to accept here is that rape does not seem to be clearly differentiated from extra-marital sex, and by extension that a male perpetrator does not merit the same punishment as the female 'perpetrator' in the same act. This seems to be a deliberate inversion of the way in which the moral economy of rape tends to be asserted in the public discourse that has emerged since at least the 1970s. I don't have the authority to assume that this is what the Mufti intended, but even if it were, I would continue to argue that this speech has been brought out as part of a cultural political agenda that is decidedly illiberal. If the Mufti is posing his own illiberal agenda, then it is hardly surprising in that context.