Appreciating Paisley

Letters

Vol. 9 No. 5 · 5 March 1987

From Robert Barnai

SIR: After confusing the issue by wrongly implying that ‘rationalist’ social scientists who oppose and are disgusted by Ian Paisley fancy that religious belief can be dismissed as unreasonable, Charles Townshend (LRB, 22 January) wonders, in effect, what a bigot really is, in decisive contradistinction from one who believes with ‘firm religious conviction’. If Professor Townshend needs as much help as he may with this question, he will find a pretty good answer to be going on with in the sixth edition of the the Concise Oxford Dictionary, where a bigot is defined as an ‘obstinate or intolerant adherent of some creed or view’; the word dates from the 16th century in English, according to the COD, and is from the French; the origin is unknown. Thus Paisley is not just exceptionally sincere, and the stronger and the worthier for it, not just to be admired for his post-Yeatsian passion and conviction, not just a brilliant populist (which Townshend also gets wrong, glancingly) – he is a bigot. He is one of a large number of bigots, only a very small proportion of whom are well-known in history because almost all of them are content to have people like Paisley lead them in battle, real or rhetorical, and take the heat while they cheer them on, year after anguished year, and sharpen their knives. In the Republic of South Africa, as I hope Townshend will not attempt to deny, the Bothas and every other person whose beliefs and values they represent are extremely dangerous bigots. In my country, George Wallace of Alabama, who has just retired from politics is, or rather was, a bigot. It is very much to be wished that Paisley will, and fast, undergo the same kind of development, moral or intellectual, as Wallace, who became notorious throughout the world in the Sixties for his unremitting hostility to justice and civil rights for blacks, but has since moderated his views and policies so much that for several years he has been highly admired by many blacks, in the South and elsewhere; and that Paisley need not be, like Wallace, the object of an assassination attempt that left him painfully crippled in order to experience such a transformation.

In Israel there are among the bigots of the Jewish theocracy Rabbi Meir Kahane, another American, originally, and his growing group of mostly native-born anti-Arab bigots. They and rather many other Jews feel supremely justified in the punishments practised or proposed towards Muslims, including those who are full legal citizens of Israel, because of what they and their relations suffered under Hitler, the most zealous and accomplished single bigot of our time, and under millions of other bigots in many different parts of Europe, certainly not only Germany, some of them also members of their local Nazi Parties and some of them freelances who saw their opportunity.

Calvin, Paisley’s great inspiration, was a model bigot, infallible and inflexible, and so were the Popes who preached the Crusades against the Infidel. The present Pope is a big bigot, at least with respect to homosexuality, abortion and contraception, by means of which he has already caused prodigious suffering throughout most of the oikoumene, and a smaller bigot with respect to mere heresy – ‘firm religious conviction’ that he doesn’t like. But give him time: as he goes from strength to strength, he may be able to cause more than frustration to vast numbers of loathsome heretics as well.

It is the purpose of Townshend’s perplexedly partial vindication of Paisley that I wonder at. Is it a contribution to the beginning of a campaign to reverse Paisley’s image, especially, of course, among British voters, and to make him respected, however grudgingly and if only for staying the course and having plenty of ‘firm religious conviction’? It wouldn’t be the first time that a practical political settlement had such a beginning; it wouldn’t be even the hundred-thousandth time. Indeed, if only the White House authors of the Irangate scandal had had the leisure for it, that elegant little piece of statesmanship might very well have had its first delicate flowering at least two years ago, when we Americans should have begun to hear, from one source and then another, that the Ayatollahs of Iran weren’t really bad guys after all, and certainly not bigots, certainly not ‘obstinate’ or ‘intolerant’. Sure, they might be pretty damned sincere in their beliefs. But the beliefs were deeply religious and much to be respected as such, even if we couldn’t understand them very well. And we could still do some business with those people. And we’d better, on their terms.

Robert Barnai
Beverly Hills, California