Tanja Nijmeijer fought at a young age with the FARC, the ‘Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group which has waged war on the Colombian government from the jungle for 60 years. She was involved in acts of violence. Does this make her a terrorist? A 2023 documentary about her life mainly highlights her idealistic side but does show both sides of the coin.

Tanja Nijmeijer has been called both a revolutionary (by herself) and a terrorist (by others) and is on Interpol’s most-wanted list. The documentary Tanja—Dagboek van een guerrillera (Tanja—Diary of a guerrilla), directed by Marcel Mettelsiefen, gives us Tanja’s life in a nutshell: she describes how she became involved with the FARC and how her thinking has developed over the years. Her mother, who received no signs of life from her daughter for years and had to get all her information from the media, also gives her side.

Tanja was born in 1978 and spent her childhood in the far north of the Netherlands. In 1998, she visited Colombia as a student in training to become an English teacher. She became involved in the conflict between the established order and the FARC, which she joined in 2002.

When the Colombian state began to waver under the ongoing violence, the US military entered the conflict. Tanja worked her way up in the FARC and became a significant player. She was romantically involved with one of the FARC leader’s nephews until 2010 and, from 2012, she even took a prominent role in the peace negotiations which led to an agreement between the FARC and the government in 2016.

In the documentary, she denies that she can be equated with a terrorist. She says she fought in a revolutionary war with a clearly defined goal, which she claims is very different from the type of attacks by, for example, al-Qaeda. She is asked questions about the tension between ‘acts of war’ and ‘terrorism’. But this distinction gradually becomes blurred by the facts presented in the film, even as the film increasingly portrays Tanja herself as a rebellious peacemaker and great reconcile.

The documentary leaves open the question of whether Tanja’s actions actually killed people. Tanja is accused of taking part in the kidnapping of three American citizens and she was involved in the bombing of a passenger bus which resulted in no casualties. But, as the documentary states, tragic deaths could just as well have occurred in this type of attack. And how exactly did this bombing contribute to military objectives? The film argues that the FARC wanted to target those at the heart of business and government and thus targeted the environments frequented by such people. But can one describe these as legitimate military targets? Was the FARC truly less terroristic than other terrorist groups?

Tanja describes in her diaries that she saw the flaws of the movement very clearly—corruption, sexism, favouritism, and financial reliance on drug production and distribution. She also mentions that the ultimate goal, the foundation of a new kind of society based on equality, camaraderie, and communality, gradually vanished behind the horizon. Nevertheless, she remains loyal to the movement, even after Colombian media translated and published parts of her critical diary in 2007.

‘How do you deal with this?’ the interviewer asks her. ‘Are you nostalgic when you think about your family?’

‘It was a great sacrifice’, Tanja says, looking bright-eyed into the camera, fierce and confident, wearing an army cap, with an automatic weapon gleaming against her shoulder. ‘But if I had chosen to be with my family, I couldn’t have been here. It’s one or the other. This is the route I chose. I am convinced that this sacrifice must be made.’

‘The guerrilla [movement] is your family?’ the interviewer asks. ‘Yes, of course’, Tanja replies with a smile. ‘The guerrilla [movement] is even much more than that. I have this to say to the world: I am a guerrilla fighter for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and a guerrilla I will remain until we win or until I die.’

It is clear why the FARC did not execute Tanja after her critical diary fragments fell into enemy hands. She is very mediagenic. Her eyes shine and she speaks with a disarming charm; she is obviously ready to fight and die for what she believes in. Energy, fanaticism, and drive emanate from her. The documentary relies heavily on this, and it seems to choose Tanja’s side. With her recurring ‘You know…?’, the viewer is made to feel like a confidant: You know this situation—you understand what I am talking about.

In this way, the documentary stands up for Tanja. Is that just? I had to let the film sink in for a long time.

I cannot deny being intrigued by the ‘abysmal’ (my word; see below) choice she made. She has shown herself able to let go of all her certainties and to fight for her ideals without restraint. In my 2022 book Wees Afgrondelijk (Be Abyssal), I describe the kind of inner transformation that this requires: a leap of faith associated with a willingness to burn bridges behind you. At the macro level of geopolitics and ideology, the birth of any worldview comes from just such a leap.

Her Marxist-Leninist guerrilla warfare was more important to this young lady, who literally had her whole future ahead of her, than her family. Tanja could have died at any moment, blown up by bombs dropped from American planes or as a result of one of the many dangers of the jungle. These risks are intertwined with the destiny she chose to follow, and she seemed to accept them completely—she was truly willing to die for the cause.

In choosing this path, she consciously opted to reject the bourgeois existence that loomed in the 1990s. When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union dissolved itself, the monomaniacal fear of communism and nuclear war gave way to a wider range of uneasy projections of the future. Liberal democracy became hegemonic: there were no longer any existential challenges or serious alternatives to it. And the highest virtue of liberal democracy was that it was easy; it offered comfort and material prosperity.

However, as Nietzsche prophesied, bourgeois-capitalist existence is too boring and too flat for a truly heroic soul. It would not do justice to the human appetite for intense passions, perilous adventures, and absolute justice. Tanja Nijmeijer, preeminently Nietzschean, made the choice to dedicate her life to a revolutionary mission and to subordinate her individual identity to a collective war effort.

If you grew up in Colombia, such a choice would perhaps be understandable. Suppose you were born in such a country. The government is corrupt and cares little about the people born into poverty. Any politician who does not allow himself to be bribed and does not collude with the existing networks of power is destroyed by smear campaigns in the mass media.

In this situation, you try to climb up through hard work, but criminals and corrupt officials make this impossible. Inflation makes building a decent life an even more unlikely prospect, and all the rules serve only to strengthen the position of the people who already have money and power. What tangible option does one have in this situation other than to try and effect change through revolution? The last glimmer of hope lies in armed uprising. But Tanja herself came from a rich country with a family that loved her: she involved herself in a conflict that had very little to do with her. This was an extraordinary choice.

Every revolution starts with good intentions but ends with new elites replacing the old ones. Even in the so-called egalitarian communes of the 1960s and 1970s—in which even sex partners were shared—the male leadership figures had more access to the women. Any levelling in the name of equality requires a distribution mechanism, and therefore authority, and therefore inequality in power. And even if property is divided equally, jealousy remains—it is just shifted to personal qualities such as beauty, intelligence, musical talent, or whatever else.

Organised violence of any kind requires hierarchy, and these hierarchies persist after the original aims of the violence have been achieved or have fallen away. Dissident voices must be suppressed in order to keep spirits high and to ensure an atmosphere of solidarity. Those who have fought and suffered in battle then think that they are more entitled than others to the fruits of victory. Every revolutionary order thus takes on the shape of the old order that it deposed.

It is not without reason that Tanja’s descriptions of the internal corruption within the FARC are reminiscent of Orwell’s Animal Farm. In that story, the oppressive farmers who were driven out and the pigs who took their positions of power became, in the end, indistinguishable.

Ultimately, however, Tanja does not go all the way. Although she says halfway through the film that she will either triumph as a revolutionary or go down fighting, things turn out differently. She begins to see that the balance has turned. The Colombian government has grown stronger, backed by the US, and the FARC’s attacks and its business model—based on kidnappings and drug money—have turned popular opinion against them. Although the FARC cannot be completely destroyed—it is still difficult to wipe out a guerrilla army in a jungle—the battle is no longer winnable for them either. Tanja decides that a compromise must be made, and peace must be sought.

The hardened jungle warrior transforms into a figure of reconciliation, gets an international platform, and everything seems to improve. This about-face doesn’t seem to cost her much. She remains as mediagenic as ever, blazing with militancy as well as charm. Was giving up her ideals a bitter pill to swallow? In the end, the status quo wins, but we get little idea of how this affected Tanja psychologically.

As a viewer, you are left with mixed feelings. Tanja Nijmeijer is a fascinating person, a beautiful woman, passionate and eloquent as well as temperamental. The film colludes with her in portraying the case for her as sympathetic while downplaying the case against her—or at least she herself manages to do so when she gives an account of her choices. The viewer feels inclined to forgive her for almost anything. But how deserved is such forgiveness? After all, the FARC killed many innocent people and was responsible for a great deal of human misery.  

The questions raised by Tanja Nijmeijer’s life and choices are perennial, and maybe even unanswerable. A final thought: perhaps the documentary not only offers a portrait of the past but also hints at a possible future. Given the current state of affairs, might we see revolutions breaking out in the streets of Europe itself once again? The disappearance of the middle class under the pressures of globalisation and immigration, the ever-growing gap between the established order and the ‘populists’/‘nationalists’, vast inequalities across the continent not only in wealth but also in social mobility… With people like Tanja Nijmeijer among us, and with the ineradicable human impulses she represents, revolution certainly cannot be ruled out.

The post Tanja Nijmeijer: revolutionary or terrorist? appeared first on The Freethinker.

In the Netherlands, House of Representatives elections were held on 22 November 2023. This turned out to be a great victory for Geert Wilders’ party (Party for Freedom; PVV), which gained 37 seats out of 150. Other parties with a significant vote share included the Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which won 24 seats, New Social Contract (NSC), which won 20 seats, and Farmers and Civilians (BBB), which won 7 seats. PVV is generally considered to be a populist party and VVD a traditional liberal party, while NSC is a Christian democratic party and BBB is for the protection of farmers’ interests.

On 28 November 2023, the Speaker of the House of Representatives assigned an informateur: Ronald Plasterk. An informateur investigates which parties can form a coalition in the wake of an election and presides over negotiations between the party leaders to draw up a program of policies. Here is a description of Plasterk’s rather broad assignment:

‘1. To investigate whether agreement is or can be reached between the parties PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB on a common baseline for safeguarding the Constitution, fundamental rights, and the democratic rule of law. 2. If, in the opinion of these four parties, agreement is reached on point 1, then subsequently investigate whether there is a real prospect of reaching an agreement on issues such as migration, security of existence (including care, purchasing power, permanent jobs and sufficient housing), good governance, security, and stable public finances, international policy and healthy business climate, climate, nitrogen agriculture and horticulture, and fisheries.’

The first task is rather striking since no Dutch political party has as its basic premise the view that the Constitution may be violated, or that fundamental rights or the democratic rule of law should be threatened. No party denies the value of fundamental rights or the model of the democratic rule of law. So, reaching a consensus on these principles ought to have been very easy. But was it?

In fact, reaching a consensus proved more difficult than expected. Indeed, it has recently become clear that one of the named parties wants to abandon negotiations: Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC, a relatively new party that emerged from a split with the Christian Democratic Appeal party last August.

Background to the informateur’s brief

We must understand the specific nature of Plasterk’s assignment against the background of a situation that the Netherlands shares with other countries in Western Europe, including Germany, the UK, and France. That background is that, for more than 20 years, Western Europe has been affected by violent terrorist attacks in which the terrorists have invoked their religion as a motivation. This religion is not Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jewish, but Islamic.

Of the four political parties that have recently been exploring whether they want joint government responsibility, one party is wholly focused on this particular issue. That party is Wilders’s PVV, which essentially won the election.

Islam as a problem and a breaking point

Wilders takes the motivation given by terrorists themselves very seriously and concludes that ‘Islam’ is thus a challenge to Europe.

He also proposes measures to stop the growth of Islam. Wilders and his party have proposed measures like banning the Qur’an, expelling ‘radical Muslims’ from the Netherlands, closing mosques, and denying Islam the status of a religion (and thus excluding it from the constitutional right to freedom of religion). The PVV even made a legislative proposal to settle these things. These measures are—to put it mildly—at odds with the Dutch constitution, fundamental human rights, and the democratic rule of law—and also with the European Convention on Human Rights. Nevertheless, PVV’s most extreme ideas have been ditched by Wilders in the recent negotiations.

Contrary to what he has been accused of, Wilders does not discriminate based on skin colour. He is only vehemently anti-Islam. He is very critical of Moroccan youth but not because of their ethnicity; rather, he is concerned about the overrepresentation of Moroccans in the criminal statistics.

In any case, the negotiations for the formation of a new government are in a critical phase now. Two weeks from now (4 May 2024), the four parties involved in negotiations will tell the public whether they will make the jump. Is there still hope?

Two clashing perspectives

I think there are still chances for a settlement. Let us first put the question: what should the conversation between the four parties mentioned at the beginning of this article be about? There are two opposing perspectives.

First, that of journalist Peter Oborne, as set out in his book The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam (2022). Oborne argues that throughout the Western world, people are needlessly worried about Islam. Islam is an ‘ordinary religion’, and all stories about Islam as inherently violent or impossible to integrate into democratic conditions are based on false assumptions.

Second, there is Anne Marie Waters’s perspective, as set out in her Beyond Terror: Islam’s Slow Erosion of Western Democracy (2018). The title speaks for itself.

Geert Wilders, in his book Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (2012), took a stand supportive of Waters’s point of view and illustrates this with numerous examples. Not least the example of his own life: he has been on the hit list of jihadist terrorist organizations for decades.

In my view, Oborne is naïve. But Waters (and Wilders) are too pessimistic. What we should do is focus on Islamism, or political Islam, not on Islam as such.

The significance of this debate

This debate is also of great interest to freethinkers and atheists. If Waters and Wilders are right, then it is not only permissible but urgent that restrictive measures be taken to protect the democratic rule of law from the forces that undermine it. And if Oborne is right, anything Wilders proposes is out of order, discriminatory, and contrary to the Constitution, the democratic rule of law, and the fundamental rights of citizens.

France as a guiding country

The most interesting developments on the status of Islam and its practitioners in Europe are currently taking place in France. This is not surprising. France has the largest Muslim population compared to other Western European countries, and it has also been hit by the most horrific jihadist attacks. Think of Charlie Hebdo (2015), the Bataclan (2015), and the beheading of Samuel Paty (2020). These events, together with France’s century-long tradition of thoroughgoing laïcité, have unleashed an unprecedented intellectual energy in finding solutions to the related problems of Muslim integration and Islamic/Islamist terrorism.

The most recent development is the struggle against ‘Islamist separatism’. In 2020, President Emmanuel Macron vowed to tackle this phenomenon, which he described as the attempt of France’s Muslim community to supplant civil laws with its own laws and customs derived from religious practice. The Macron administration opposes this because it essentially creates two parallel societies.

In my view, the solution lies in recognizing that Islamism poses a challenge to Western European countries, but that, at the same time, one should try to respect the rights of all citizens, including Muslim citizens, as much as possible. One way to do this is to avoid creating privileges for religious minorities, e.g., granting Muslims the right to wear headscarves in situations where this is forbidden for all citizens (such as in the army or the judiciary).

One finds this line of argument defended, for example, by the French philosopher Sylviane Agacinski in her Face à une guerre sainte (2022) and by the French lawyer Richard Malka in Traité sur l’intolérance (2023). What these approaches have in common is targeting Islamism, rather than Islam itself.

So what Wilders will have to convince his interlocutors of is that Islamism is a real problem, not just in the Netherlands but in all of Europe—and the world.

Wilders is also a well-known Dutch politician in other parts of the world. Indeed, he is so well known that jihadist-motivated murderers have travelled from Pakistan to the Netherlands to kill him. In 2019, Pakistani Junaid I. was sentenced to 10 years in prison for an attempt to kill Wilders, while last year, the Pakistani ex-cricketer Khalid Latif was sentenced to 12 years for incitement to murder Wilders.

The Netherlands as a test case

The Netherlands could become a test case for developments in other parts of Europe. At present, in Germany and Belgium, parties similar to Wilders’s are on track for steep gains in 2024. These parties are critical of Islam and mass migration and in favour of national sovereignty. This is generally characterized as the ‘far-rightisation’ of Europe or the ‘normalisation of the far right’. It is a matter for debate whether this increasing drift to the right among the populations of these European countries ought to be of serious concern. Personally, I think the so-called right-wing parties have some good points to consider; above all their critical attitude towards the Islamist undermining of democratic institutions. Nevertheless, it is essential that Europe finds a liberal path forward. What happens in the Netherlands will be a sign of what is to come.

Further reading on religion in the Netherlands

Judging the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Derk Venema and Niko Alm

The Enlightenment and the making of modernity, by Piers Benn

The post Geert Wilders, Europe, and the threat of Islamism appeared first on The Freethinker.

Although every Western country has the freedom of religion enshrined in its constitution or other human rights law, it seems that still only adherents to traditional, established religions actually fully enjoy that right. To address this inequality, one can organise protest marches, send tweets and write articles. If this sparks any reaction at all from government officials, it will probably be in the form of a reassurance to the protesters that they have misunderstood the situation and that all religions are truly treated equally.

But there is a different approach that forces authorities to reveal their actual position: filing an application that in some way involves religion, for example requesting official recognition for a new church or invoking a religious exception. This is what Pastafari(ans) have done in several European countries over the last ten years or so. In most cases, the authorities refuse to treat Pastafarianism, aka the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (‘FSM’), on a par with other religions.

After a brief overview of this young religion and the tradition of which it is part, we will consider a series of court cases in the Netherlands and Austria resulting from applications that were rejected. From these, we will draw a tentative conclusion as to why the state authorities might want to decide that some beliefs count as ‘real’ religions, but others do not.

‘Invented religions’

In Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010), Carole Cusack described several recent spiritual movements of the Western world that are different from traditional churches and are often called ‘invented religions’. Examples of these are the Church of All Worlds (1962), Discordianism (1963), the Church of the Sub-Genius (1970s), Jediism (2000), Matrixism (2004), and the FSM Church or Pastafarianism (2005). Instead of ‘invented’, which is not a distinguishing characteristic, it might be better to call them New, Unknown, Weird and/or Small (‘NUWS’) religions – a term proposed by Derk Venema. Yet even when these religions seem, especially to members of traditional churches, satirical, dishonest or motivated by rebelliousness instead of reverence, such properties still do not set them apart from older, larger and better known religions. Surely Jesus was a religious rebel? Doesn’t Mormonism come across as a satire on Christianity?

Moreover, although there are many competing functionalist and essentialist definitions of religion, caught in an eternal power struggle, a generally agreed definition of religion does not exist. Cusack has argued that it is impossible to distinguish the religiousness of adherents to new and weird religions from the religiosity of people who identify as, for example, Christians or Muslims. Because of this vagueness, and the separation of church and state, Western governments usually adopt a very broad concept of religion. We shall see, however, that governments and courts are not so open-minded when it comes to concrete applications by adherents of a non-traditional religion like Pastafarianism.

Pastafarianism

In 2005, the Kansas Board of Education decided to oblige schools to teach intelligent design theory alongside evolution theory in biology classes. Bobby Henderson, a science student from Portland, Oregon, was baffled by this decision and sent them a letter. He explained his indignation about omitting one very important version of intelligent design, including an all-powerful, invisible, flying monster made of spaghetti and meatballs. Subsequently, inspired by this noodly deity, he wrote the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and later the Loose Canon appeared.

Through the internet, the FSM became very popular, and Pastafarians founded churches in his name all over the world. The Gospel tells that in Pastafari heaven there are stripper factories and beer volcanos, and in hell the beer is lukewarm and the strippers have sexually transmittable diseases. It is strongly advised to wear pirate regalia at certain occasions, and to dine with pasta and beer on Fridays, the holy day. Many Pastafari consider it obligatory to wear a colander on their heads, especially on festive occasions, although a German branch views this as blasphemy.

The eight I’d-really-rather-you-didn’ts, received by pirate Mosey from the FSM himself on top of Mount Salsa, contain the most important Pastafarian ethical standards. Overlapping with many other religious ethics, they promote an attitude of friendliness, toleration, charity, non-violence, critical thinking, modesty, joy, humour, and wise budgeting, as the sixth I’d-really-rather-you-didn’t advises:

‘6. I’d Really Rather You Didn’t Build Multimillion-Dollar Churches/Temples/Mosques/Shrines To My Noodly Goodness When The Money Could Be Better Spent (Take Your Pick):

1. Ending Poverty

2. Curing Diseases

3. Living In Peace, Loving With Passion, And Lowering The Cost Of Cable.’

The Netherlands

In the Netherlands, four different types of applications have been filed, one of them ultimately reaching the European Court of Human Rights. The first one was an application by the Dutch FSM Church for the legal personality of ‘religious association’ (kerkgenootschap), which is exempt from several duties – e.g. concerning financial administration – that all other legal persons (associations, foundations etc.) do have, according to the Dutch Civil Code. This application was initially turned down, but approved upon appeal in 2016. It was the first and only successful application in this important year for Dutch Pastafarianism. Later in the same year, the church applied for registration as a Public Benefit Organisation, but was turned down.

Also in 2016, the same applicant, Dutch FSM church founder Dirk-Jan Dijkstra, filed a third application: this time, he requested a driver’s licence with a photo in which he wore a colander. To his disappointment, the mayor denied it, so he took it to court. The courts’ decisions in this and similar cases revolve around the exception to the rule that forbids headwear in ID photos:

‘Deviating from section 2 [banning headwear], a photo [with headwear] can be accepted if the applicant has shown that there are religious or world view [levensbeschouwelijke] reasons against not covering the head.’

Consequently, to get his ID photo with colander approved, the applicant would have to convince the court of two things: 1) Pastafarianism is a religion or world view, and 2) the Pastafarian applicant has bona fide religious reasons that require him to wear the colander in the photograph. In this case, Dijkstra cited a holy text to substantiate his claim that the colander is indeed religious headwear for Pastafari:

‘But as T.V. hadn’t been invented yet, Penelope put the Holy Colander on her head and grabbed a handy pair of salad tongs.’

(Loose Canon, Book of Penelope, Ch. 2, verse 7)

Additionally, the official FSM website recommends it: ‘Why not wear a colander in your ID photos?’

Sadly, the appeal was denied on the grounds that the applicant did not always wear the colander, and used to take it off when speaking with clients as a legal advisor. The legal status of the FSM Church as a religious association was not deemed relevant. Interestingly, the court did not decide that Pastafarianism is not a religion or world view, only that the applicant’s reasons were not exclusively religious.

(In fact, before the court cases started, a few ID applications with colander photos slipped through the bureaucratic net. This means that there are still some Dutch Pastafari who do sport a colander in their ID photos – until they expire, of course.)

The fourth Dutch Pastafari case also involved a denied driver’s licence application. This time, the courts denied it on different grounds: that Pastafarianism does not meet the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) requirements for recognition as a religion or faith. According to the ECHR, a purported religion only counts as real when it ‘attains a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance’. After losing the case as well as the appeal to the highest Dutch administrative court, the Pastafarian Mienke de Wilde and her legal counsel (Derk Venema) took the case to the ECHR. This court declared the application inadmissible, but this was no summary ruling: in 18 pages, the court explains Pastafarianism, illuminates the Dutch case, translates the Dutch ruling, and justifies its decision that no human rights have been violated by it. Although formally the case was not decided on its merits, in reality it was.

In section 52, the court concurs with the Dutch highest administrative court that Pastafarianism suffers from a ‘lack of the required seriousness and cohesion’. The Dutch court based its conclusion on the following argument:

‘In particular, the required seriousness and cohesion are lacking. The…parodying scriptures are distinctive features in this connection. The lack of cohesion is illustrated, for example, by the relationship set out in Henderson’s letter between the decline in the number of pirates since 1800 and global warming.’

Interpretative restraint?

In their assessment of the realness of Pastafarianism as a religion, it is highly questionable whether both courts remained within the bounds of the required interpretative restraint regarding matters of religion. It is interesting that the judge who conducted the interrogation at the Dutch high administrative court also wrote an authoritative commentary on the Dutch constitution emphasising the importance of this restraint. What’s more, seriousness or satire are often in the eye of the beholder. Might Jesus not have been regarded a parodist by first century Jews? Are all the stories in the Bible and the Quran ‘coherent’? This is at least a matter of interpretation – religious interpretation, which is not the province of the law or the state.

Considering some of the religious or world view movements that have been recognised by the ECHR, it is even more incredible that Pastafarianism was rejected: Scientology, pacifism, atheism, Druidism, Divine Light Zentrum, and the Osho Movement are all judged bona fide. So even an aggressive, authoritarian, commercial and allegedly exploitative organisation like Scientology is a legally approved church, but the FSM Church is not.

The German Pastafari Bruder Spaghettus, who already possessed a driver’s licence with pirate headgear, applied for an ID card with the same photograph. It was rejected on the same grounds used by the other courts, and Bruder Spaghettus settled for a (non-regulated) religious beard tie. The reasoning of all these courts is especially worrying because it reeks of arbitrariness. When is a ‘certain level’ of seriousness reached? Does it imply that real religions can only be deadly serious? Is humorous evangelisation forbidden? But as Carole Cusack has shown, applying humour or having a joking founder does not disqualify the followers of a faith from being considered real believers. Moreover, as the philosopher Nick Martin has argued, the courts tacitly and subjectively take seriousness as a sign of integrity. The fallacious implication is that absence of seriousness entails a lack of integrity.

Because of its non-specificity, the ECHR’s criterion of ‘seriousness’ runs the risk of being used more widely to disqualify what Venema has called NUWS religions: the religious content is judged not credible and thus there is no real religion. But that is why it is called ‘faith’: it is a leap of faith to put your trust in something incredible. State authorities seem to treat NUWS religions as ‘nuisance’ religions. These cases reveal not only these courts’ common tendency to judge the authenticity of a religion by comparing it, consciously or not, to traditional religions, but also the zealousness with which they are inclined to disqualify the FSM church. As if keen to prove the latter point, the Dutch Ministry for the Interior sent a letter to all municipalities urging them to reject any ID application with a colander photo.

The Struggle for Pastafarianism in Austria

If you want to wear any type of headgear in your driver’s licence photo in Austria, as in the Netherlands, it is allowed only for medical or religious reasons. Other than that there is a no-hats policy.

As an atheist, Niko Alm, co-author of this article, thought this unfair and devised a plan to circumvent that rule. At the same time, he was also, and still is, a Pastafari. There is no contradiction here: you do not have to believe in anything specific, you can be agnostic or even atheist and still count yourself a member of a religious organisation – whether in Austria or anywhere else. So he donned a pasta strainer as his own personal religious headgear and applied for his licence in 2009. It required some persistence and a trip to the public health officer, who wanted to check whether he was sane enough to drive a car, but in the end Alm succeeded in procuring the first official document with Pastafarian appendages. The news went viral in 2011 and many fellow ‘believers’ worldwide followed suit. It would remain the only victory against Austrian bureaucracy for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Austria (CFSMA) until today. And many battles have been fought.

Becoming official

In 2014 the newly founded Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Austria filed an application with the Department of Religious Affairs to be registered as an officially recognised ‘confessional community’ (Religiöse Bekenntnisgemeinschaft). This is the first step to become an ‘officially recognised church or religious community’ (gesetzlich anerkannte Kirche oder Religionsgesellschaft) in this two-tier system of religious organisations.

In Austria, there are 16 religions falling in the ‘officially recognised’ category including the major Christian denominations, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and 11 confessional communities including Hinduism, the Unification Church (formerly Moon sect), and Bahá’í.

To be granted the status of confessional community, the organisation has to prove that it is a religious community in theory and practice by submitting its statute in writing and a list of at least 300 members with permanent residency in the country. The status of a confessional community does not come with a lot of benefits. It more or less serves as the anteroom to take the next step that requires membership of at least 0.2% of the population (approximately 18.000 people) and a minimum qualifying period of five years. But it is worth the wait. The status of ‘officially recognised church or religious community’ yields a plethora of privileges: religious education in schools; state-funded religious teachers, university professors and faculties; direct subsidies; tax exemptions; a blasphemy law; military chaplains, imams and rabbis; various seats in committees and national public broadcasting; and many more. The Republic of Austria is fostering a cooperative model of state and religion; it is safe to call the ‘officially recognised churches and religious’ communitieswhat they to all intents and purposes are: state religions.

The Austrian Pastafari naturally wanted to belong to this elite club of organised world views and also to benefit from the abovementioned privileges. But they were turned down. First by the Department of Religious Affairs and later – after the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster had taken Austria to court – by the state legal system. Finally, after five years of going through all official channels, the CFSMA was turned down by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that its members did not form a real community. In essence, the judge held that the CFSMA is not a confessional community yet, so it cannot actually have members, and instead needs to prove that at least 300 people participate in its rites. That argument is not only partially circular, it is also an elaborate divergence from the law that requires no such thing. It should not matter whether the rites are executed in large numbers at one place or whether the total number of members is made up of individuals worshipping in private.

All the other criteria were fulfilled. In the court’s sealed copy of the judgment it was clearly stated that Pastafarianism is a religion and in its character as such is indistinguishable from other established and recognised state religions. A small victory at least.

European Court of Human Rights, again

Undeterred, the Austrian Pastafari filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in November 2019. So far, this application has remained unanswered:

‘The refusal to recognise the legal personality of the religious denomination of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster violates in any case the fundamental right of the complainants to freedom of belief and conscience (Art. 9 ECHR). Art. 9 ECHR protects the right to profess or not to profess a religious community or ideology alone and privately [a point apparently missed by the Austrian courts], or in community with others, publicly or in circles of like-minded people, especially in religious services or otherwise by words or deeds. Freedom of religion includes the right to try to convince others, e.g. by teaching (ECtHR 6.11.2008 – 58911/00). This also forms the core of the scope of protection of Art 9 ECHR. These rights are violated by the refusal to grant legal personality. The establishment and existence of independent religious communities would also be indispensable for pluralism in a democratic society.’

Soon after, another appeal had to be filed at the ECHR when the Austrian legal system terminated Alm’s hopes of procuring a passport and national ID card with Pastafarian headgear. This time around, he decided to wear a modest pasta crown instead of a colander, but the authorities firmly stood their ground in denying his rights, by referring to their earlier judgment that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was not an officially recognised confessional community – and thus not a state religion. After Alm had spent several years enjoying religious freedom as far as his driver’s licence was concerned, the bureaucracy seemed to have changed its mind, and decided that religious freedom was not a right but a privilege granted only to those deemed appropriate.

‘Church’: a trademark

The Austrian Pastafarians have dragged the Republic and its institutions to court several times. Most recently, in May 2022, the CFSMA suffered another blow when it was refused the right to call itself a ‘church’, because this term was reserved for officially recognised Christian denominations. This time round, the judges followed an argument that the Department of Religious Affairs had used previously to deny the CFSMA official status: apparently, by calling their Church a ‘church’, the CFSMA may be rendering itself liable to being confused with Christian churches. This is interesting, given that Jesus Christ himself is the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – until anybody can prove otherwise. This makes Pastafarianism essentially a Christian denomination too.

The judge refused to see the paradox here, but he at least conceded that the Church of Scientology ought not to call itself a church either, even though it is registered as such in Austria. This time around, the Pastafarians chose not to appeal. Instead, they are going to change their name to ‘Kitchen of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’ instead. It seems more appropriate anyway, and in German the words are near-homophones: Kirche and Küche.

Self-defence

Well into the 21^st century, democracies that are founded on constitutional values of equality have been expunging various forms of differentialism, whether based on gender, ethnicity or class, from their laws. Yet individual world views and organised religions are still being used to enforce legal discrimination. Freedom of religion, once part of the essence of liberty, has been transformed into a tool to secure special rights and immunise religious world views against open societies. Instead of its original function of protecting small religious communities against the state and established churches, freedom of religion is now used to protect state and established religions against small ones and their critical stance.

Pastafarianism strives to abolish these remnants of differentialism, not only in liberal democracies like Austria, Germany and the Netherlands but in political systems worldwide. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is seeping into societies globally from the US and the UK to Russia, Australia, Israel, and, rather furtively, also into countries shaped by Islam. It serves as a mirror, sometimes as a Trojan horse, a role model and a weapon of democratic self-defence.

Editor’s note: some of the legal cases in which the authors were involved were the subject of I, Pastafari (2019), a documentary directed by Michael Arthur which the Freethinker can heartily recommend. We are grateful to the latter for permission to reproduce two images from the film above.

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