Of gods and (medicine) men

The rising tide of religious illiberalism

Medicine Man by Jackson Beardy

By Anonymed (an anonymous Canadian Doctor)

Nearly half the world’s population claims to follow one of just three religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have shaped our world to a degree almost impossible to fully comprehend. Religions are complex things, but I think we can all agree that no single monotheism has had a monopoly on virtue or vice. Each can lay claim to moments of true enlightenment, just as each must contend with others of extraordinary barbarism.

If the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that a disturbing number of physicians believe the West is irredeemably tainted by its past (and a chunk more would surely say its present too). Where they got that idea is a mystery for the ages, but given the fact, I suppose it should not surprise us that the West’s faith traditions have also been singled out for special opprobrium. It is increasingly clear that among the Abrahamic faiths, among the “People of the Book”, some, as a certain swine opined, are more equal than others.

I’m not a religious person and have no particular sensibilities thereof. But in a medical profession obsessed with “cultural safety”, the horror of “microaggressions”, and the sanctity of subjective truth, believers of a Jesus or Moses bent are rarely harboured so. Even those of us who believe all ideologies should be criticized in accordance with what they actually say and do in the world are (at best) treated as suspect by those who single out the Judeo-Christian tradition as the midwife of colonialism, racism, orientalism and much else, and view other faiths as eternally victimized.

I still remember the first time I saw a sticker on the laptop of a wet-behind-the-ears medical student proudly declaring herself to be “Your future abortion provider.” This seemed to me rather bold. I put the issue of abortion to bed long ago as a “safe, legal, and rare” middle-grounder, but I couldn’t help but marvel that somehow the “shout your abortion” brand of feminism had made its way into medicine and, more importantly, that in a world where perceived offense is deemed tantamount to enduring real violence, no one seemed to care how a Christian patient might view such a public boast. 

That was pre-revolution. Since then, the double standard has only been made clearer. In 2021 Churches were vandalized and burned in response to claims that “mass graves” had been found at the sites of former (frequently Catholic-run) Residential Schools. Those of us who genuinely care about Indigenous history knew full well that such headlines were sensationalist at best (which they turned out to be) and destabilizing propaganda at worst (which they turned out to be). But this didn’t stop countless physicians from jumping on the bandwagon in the name of “reconciliation”, denouncing the Catholic Church for everything from dead children to the peculiarities of Catholic hospitals and Catholic schools (originally established, it should be noted, in response to their historical persecution).

Over the course of my medical career, it has also become increasingly, um, kosher to demonize the world’s only Jewish state in the most disgusting terms. In her reflections on the state of antisemitism at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine (TFOM), Dr. Ayelet Kuper wrote in 2022 that “[she] was told dozens of times that the current environment of growing antisemitism at TFOM was triggered by the war in Gaza in the spring of 2021, which implies (as was sometimes said to me explicitly) that the cause of TFOM’s ‘antisemitism problem’ is Israel government  policy.” This attitude isn’t unique to U of T. Every time Israel lifts a finger to defend itself from attempted war crimes (what else do you call indiscriminate rocket attacks on civilian centres?) Canadian progressives go berserk. It takes little effort to find medical students, staff physicians and even heads of medical school “social accountability” divisions publicly saying and sharing things that could certainly make Jewish students feel “unsafe”, if that were indeed the standard. But it’s not. Despite active discrimination on Canadian campuses, and more hate crimes endured per capita than any other community in the country, Jews are consistently treated as oppressors.

Not all religions get such a cold shoulder. In early 2022, a highly credentialed and internationalist pediatric surgeon (and Coptic Christian) from Montreal, Dr. Sherif Emil, published an opinion piece in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) regarding the Islamic veil and its symbolism, particularly in regards to hijabi children. Illustrating just how unmoored the CMAJ’s woke editors are, Dr. Kirsten Patrick allegedly greenlit the original piece after hearing from colleagues that normalizing children wearing the hijab (as CMAJ had in a previous issue) was to whitewash quite a lot of badness where forced modesty is concerned. Fair enough. This is certainly a reasonable position to take. The problem with self-styled “antiracists” like Dr. Patrick, however, is that they tend not to know their heads from holes in the ground. When your political philosophy involves generally being against “oppression”, it can get a little tricky figuring out who the victim actually is.

If Dr. Patrick had cared to check her intersectionality handbook, she would have realized (oops) that Islam is actually higher on the totem pole than the rights of religious dissenters, apostates, or non-believers (or women, for that matter). It was crystal clear to anyone familiar with the blasphemy taboos created by otiose terms like “Islamophobia” that Emil’s article was going to be swiftly and aggressively retracted (and with it the voices of the many Muslims not on board with such religious edicts). It took less than forty-eight hours for the article to come down, for Dr. Patrick and CMAJ to issue a dignity-stripping apology (and pledge to bring in more Muslim editors), and for Emil himself, an immigrant and a Copt (one of the most persecuted minorities in the world), to be branded, of course, an “Islamophobe.” It didn’t matter that he condemned any violence or harassment of hijabi women or that he quite clearly would never equivocate on anything like the horrendous attack on a Muslim family that took place in London, Ontario months before. His crime was not bigotry. It was criticism of what he sees as religious illiberalism. But like countless heretics before him, he was silenced and shamed and threatened. 

So consider where the medical profession now stands. We have a Christian faith whose dignity and (apparently) houses of worship are forfeit, a Jewish community for whom open disdain is a fact of modern campus life, and an Islamic faith whose self-appointed guardians, in medicine and elsewhere, fail to distinguish between even the slightest justifiable criticism of religious dogma and heinous acts of violence. This is an untenable situation, including for atheists like me who, while abhorring bigotry, believe no faith deserves special quarter - particularly not one with much to answer for in the bigotry department itself. 

___

Thanks for reading. For more from this author read Why do Iranian trans policies look so much like Western progressive ones?

There are now two ways to support Woke Watch Canada through donations:

1) By subscribing to the paid version of the Woke Watch Canada Newsletter for - $5 USD/month or $50 USD/year

2) By donating to the Canadian School Board Investigation fund, which is raising money to expand Woke Watch Canada’s research and investigation into dysfunctional Canadian school boards.