When dealing with questions of the metaphysical, is it really necessary to sky-rocket so very far from planet earth?

The scathing indictments of religion that have appeared in some British newspapers recently, such as the pieces of Polly Toynbee and Nick Cohen in the Guardian, are heartening to the extent that they demonstrate there are no longer any barriers to expressing such opinions. But I can't help thinking that, rather than mockery or apathy, a frank and respectful debate about what religion really means to us would be more helpful. Not with the pope of course, because you don't debate with fundamentalists, of any stripe, but rather with critical believers such as the reverend/philosopher Giles Fraser, or even Tariq Ramadan. The people who are trying to make the bridge between supposedly distinct "worlds" - like the so-called muslim world and the secular world.

This binary view has of course nothing to do with the reality, where the majority of believers from all faiths are perfectly adapted to life in "secular" societies, and are no less tolerant and open-minded than anyone else, they just happen to believe in God. To bring in a buzzword that may grate on some - hybridity has always been the "mot d'ordre" when it comes to religion, just like all other aspects of society. The fact that the main religions have become mythologised by a "purifying discourse" which paints them as sacred, coherent wholes that have eternally been that way ever since the day they were dropped from the sky, serves to obscure the fact that actually - all religions are an accumulation of a series of traditions and diverse influences that developped over time. They borrowed, shifted and evolved as much as all cultures do - because that's what they are - elements of culture.

But setting aside this assertion, which those who adhere to a faith would find it tough to swallow, elements of hybridity can be seen everywhere - whether in the surreal juxtaposition of islamisation and americanisation in the form of the "Hallal hamburger" at fast food joints in Europe, or the myriad ways in which religious people bend and alter the practices and requirements of their religions to render them compatible with their daily lives. And its not new. Practices undo discourses, and undo the notions of purity that surround systems of belief. Whether it's the extreme and rather unoriginal example of a priest molesting a child, or the trivial case of a Jew using a phone on the sabbath, the reality is not cut and dried, it's a messy muddle full of complexities and compromises.

We are not dealing with seperate worlds, as becomes abundantly clear whenever a few precious moments of press coverage are devoted to moderates, or in the proofs we encounter in our own lives that actually, co-existence in diversity is not only possible, its incredibly enriching. But as well as that, its incredibly mundane. We all know Muslims who are completely "European" in cultural terms, or Christians who practice their faith without judging anyone else. These people exist, we all know them, it's incredibly banal and yet it's the only thing capable of exposing the nonsense of the debate monopolised by extremists. It's not a lie to show pictures of people draped in stars and stripes holding up anti-islamic placards in NYC, nor is it a lie to show a pastor saying he wants to burn a Koran (well, now you mention it...) Those people exist too, those events are actually happening (or not happening, as the case may be). But it's disinformation to the extent that it ignores the other realities, which are not only far, far more prevalent, but also far more useful in constructing a meaningful, nuanced debate. What we have instead is the battle of imaginary "worlds" and general hysteria on all sides. Which is wholly unneccesary. Many religious people are not fundamentalists and do not seek to impose their beliefs on others. Many secularists respect the important role religion has in the lives of many and are not stubbornly campaigning for its abolition. There is nothing mutually exclusive here. So why whould we be placed in opposition to one another?

The pope's visit, thus far, seems to have been the occasion for mud-slinging in all directions, with secularists being blunt and sometimes mocking in their dismissals of religion, and then Catholics - predictably - defending themselves, often by attacking the atheists in return. Not only is this disconnected from the reality, it is a serious missed opportunity, to have a calm and respectful discussion, either about the metaphysical dimensions of the existence of God, which is always a fun one, or the place of religion in European society in the face of declining religiosity yet increasing fundamentalism and religiously-based identities. Is that too boring or too subtle for people to hear? Or for journalists to write about? Apparently so. If entertainment is the only imperative, then perhaps this justifies limiting the "debate" to caricatures, which are arguably easier to process, and certainly necessitate less thought to grasp.

So now we have Richard Dawkins and the Pope representing two warring worlds. This is the conclusion I would come to if I were a lifeform from another planet, who mistakenly landed on earth and decided to pass the time by perusing the media in recent days. This being said, I do have some sympathy for Toynbee's statement that,

"All atheists now tend to be called "militant", yet we seek to silence none, to burn no books, to stop no masses or Friday prayers, impose no laws, asking only free choice over sex and death."

But of course it can't be true. If all atheists want is unlimited free choice then those who levy charges of relativism and amorality against them would be spot on. Of course atheists want laws. They advocate tolerance but even that must be restricted, because obviously not everything can be tolerated. But the point is, the "we" which Toynbee uses to generalise about all atheists is as absurd as the "we" appropriated by religious spokespeople in the name of all the faithful. Atheists are scattered across a spectrum of values, they are no more a monolithic bloc than any other kind of "imaginary community". But it's an almost irresistible shorthand, and one I am equally prone to making myself. I advocate the view that allowing a few to speak in the name of many is always dangerous, or at the very least problematic. Carving up the world into blocs denies the realities which are evidenced by our own experiences. But its a tricky predicament and I don't have the solution. I would just like to see the debate opened. The kind of debate where each speaks frankly to his/her convictions, and the mud is left at the door.

The shortcuts which lead us round in circles

By way of context: One of the privileges of an interning stint at the African Museum is the unlimited access it grants to a much mythologised place I have always been fascinated and enchanted by (even as I learned more about its rather sinister past and associations). Hopefully this, and the fact of having moved from a position of looking at culture to “doing” culture, should provide ample food for thought, with which to nourish and sustain this much neglected little blog, over the coming months.

It’s been 50 years since the Congo gained its independence from Belgium. A milestone the museum has decided to mark on a jubilant, celebratory note, with a series of exhibitions of the central one “Independence!”, is a cursory but colourful look back over those 50 years.

Visiting it however, left me with rather mixed feelings. Trying to put my finger on a way of articulating how I felt about it, I decided to search for inspiration by apprehending the reaction of the visitors who’d preceded me, by means of a leaf through the guestbook. Therein I found surprisingly strong words of indignation and outrage from a number of English speaking visitors. While I can’t recall the exact formulations, damning words like “truth”, “genocide”, “8 million dead”, “shameful”, and “atrocities” were some that stuck in my mind. My initial reaction, in defence of the expo, if not the museum, was that such harsh criticism was unfair, that such details did not strictly belong in an exhibition chronicling the independence of the Congo from just a few years prior to 1960 up until the present day. That these belonged elsewhere.

I did enjoy the abstract and artistic quality of the expo, which contained lots of artworks, poems, music, artefacts and references to cultural and social movements. The problem is, when it comes to delicate issues where questions of politics and moral responsibility are being deliberately kept at arm’s length, the line between what is benignly allegorical and what is insidiously euphemistic, becomes a tricky one to place.

And it’s certainly not that there is nothing to read in the expo. In fact the volume of text – contained largely in reproductions of newspaper articles from around 1960, as well as a great deal of detail about historical events leading up to independence – is somewhat overwhelming.

The main problem, as I identified it, is that there is very little in the way of concrete or coherent explanations of two key processes following independence.

Firstly, the process of “hollowing out” of the state after colonialism, the dynamics and logics (such as corruption, nepotism and clientelism) accounting for the extent of economic collapse in the years that followed, due to a systematised policy of extraction under Mobutu on such a scale that it has been described as “kleptocracy” – rule by thieves. It is illustrated with paintings and caricatures, where African politicians are portrayed as predatory animals, but the words explaining it in black and white are missing. The artworks are illustrations to a story that, if you don’t have it in mind already, the museum is not going to tell you, and as a result are essentially of artistic value rather than also being complements to a narrative elucidating history, which would have provided a far fuller explanation.

Secondly, another delicate issue ignored almost totally is the situation of considerable instability, violence and unrest currently affecting areas of the Congo. There is no attempt to give a coherent explanation of the roots of the ethnic tensions, which ties into the woes of a number of other countries such as Rwanda, and making the link would have been helpful, not to say important.

Both of these are serious missed opportunities. But not only that, leaving them out means that one leaves the expo feeling as if a crucial piece of the puzzle, or part of the story has been missed out. At the end of the expo we are faced with a series of testimonies from second generation Congolese immigrants living in Belgium, young adults who express their qualms or inability to “celebrate” the anniversary of independence in light of the ongoing misery in terms of poverty and conflict still plaguing the Congo. But the museum, with its colourful displays and collages of upbeat, celebratory headlines, has not explained to us why this is so. The dissonance, the incongruity is striking and irreconcilable, and as a result the expo just doesn’t quite make sense. The story it is trying to tell doesn’t hold up.

So why leave out a clear and neutral full description of historical events, containing the details needed to make sense of how the story ends? Maybe because someone with a degree of forethought worked out that to explain the mess the Congo is in today requires an explanation of the mess Mobutu made, which in turn requires an explanation of the logics of colonialism of which he was the inheritor. And this is where we get back to all that unfortunate genocide business.

Such is the nature of the postcolonial condition: it is pervasive, and no aspect of Congolese society, culture, or recent history can be meaningfully explained without reference to it. This is the intractable problem which this place just can’t seem to escape.