The threats directed at Maajid Nawaz on Twitter continue. It’s very dispiriting, seeing people devote so much energy and outrage at something so thoroughly
- not a problem
- not a source of real harm or suffering
- not a big deal
- not their business
- not “forbidden” except in the minds of people who insist on sorting the world into Forbidden and Permitted
- not even what they think it is, to wit, “a drawing of the prophet”
when the world is so packed to the rafters with real problems, real harm, real suffering.
In general I don’t like that argument – that “don’t talk about what you’re talking about, talk about something more important” – because it’s so often deployed to tell feminists to shut the fuck up and because we have to tackle ALL THE THINGS not just the very most important and because we’re allowed to do what we’re good at, what speaks to us, what we know something about, and the like.
But still. There are limits. There are spoiled entitled self-obsessed people who think their every annoyance is earth-shattering while some pesky famine across the world doesn’t get their attention. And there are fanatics determined to rage at trivia while ignoring tragedies.
The people raging at Nawaz are in the second category, and they’re a depressing example of humanity.
As for me, I’m kind of wishing I could make myself eligible to vote in Hampstead (I did live there once! is that any use?) so that I could vote for Nawaz.