Author: Ophelia Benson

Does the BBC call in someone from the MCB to write some of its news articles, or what?

The Danish cartoonist behind drawings satirising the Prophet Muhammad has urged a Dutch lawmaker to air an anti-Islam film despite Muslim outrage…Mr Westergaard’s cartoons in a Danish paper triggered riots by Muslims in many countries in 2006.

Where to begin? Kurt Westergaard wasn’t ‘behind’ all the Motoons; he drew one of them, that’s all. And there’s the unqualifed censoriousness of ‘anti-Islam film’ – the silent but obtrusive assumption that Islam should be immune from opposition. And then the usual, indeed obligatory, distortion in which the cartoons ‘triggered riots’ as if the cartoons were to blame, along with the repetition of the claim that the cartoons, plural, were Westergaard’s work. And then there’s the absence of any mention of the fact that Westergaard is under active death threat. Look at the article, look how far down the page you have to go before that little item is mentioned. Damn near the end, that’s how far. Long before you get to that, you get to more unsubtle blaming of Westergaard for drawing a cartoon.

Mr Westergaard was one of 12 cartoonists behind the Prophet Muhammad drawings, but he was responsible for what was considered the most controversial of the pictures. The caricature – originally published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005 – featured the head of Islam’s holiest prophet with a turban depicting a bomb with a lit fuse.

Islam’s holiest prophet. Got that? The BBC wouldn’t want you to miss the point, now – this was Islam’s holiest prophet that this terrible Danish fella drew a cartoon about. Not just any old prophet, but Islam’s holiest prophet. Is your skin crawling? Is your hair standing on end? Are you flushing with rage?

The cartoons were later reprinted by more than 50 newspapers, triggering protests in parts of the Muslim world in 2006.

That ‘trigger’ word again – twice in one article. You do get it, right? It’s the cartoons’ fault, and the more than 50 newspapers’ fault. No mention – I repeat, no mention – of the Danish mullahs who trotted the cartoons around various Middle Eastern countries, doing their large bit to ‘trigger’ things; no mention – not a word – about the fake ‘cartoon’ with the pig snout, which probably did more to ‘trigger’ things than the 12 cartoonists and all of Denmark combined. It was the mullahs themselves who put that cartoon in – but they don’t come in for all this scolding and glowering from the BBC. Why not? Why is the BBC in such a hurry to wag its nasty inky finger at Westergaard while letting the mullahs completely off the hook?

Christian Jago (potentilla) died this morning. I’ve been missing her steadily since she got too ill to talk with us any more. Her brisk clarity and bluntness were a regular tonic (as the saying goes). Jean has a post at Talking Philosophy with several quotes. Here’s one that I found over here. (The database has 139, which seems like a kind of wealth.)

Connections between Rod Liddle’s opinions and logically defensible positions are largely random, IMHO. So saying he got this one right is very charitable of you, Ophelia! As TG points out above, he is a kind of auto-contrarian. (Also a churchgoer, if that’s relevant).

And here’s another…which is very apt. I did an uncharacteristic (soppy) post when Hansa, the young elephant, died suddenly last June. I was an elephant keeper at that zoo for a couple of years, and I knew Hansa’s mother and the rest of her herd very well; it was heartbreaking when she died. There are forty very kind comments on that thread – and Christian’s is the first. I ended the post by saying “I heard of a headstone inscription on the radio once: ‘It is a fearful thing to love that which death can touch.’ It is.” Christian’s reply, in its entirety, was:

It is. But ‘better to have loved and lost……” Commiserations.

Indeed, Christian. Much better. Adios, amiga.

The Vatican is a nasty piece of work. Let’s not ever lose sight of that fact.

A senior member of the Vatican has drawn up a new list of mortal sins…Along with drug use and social injustice he listed genetic manipulation and experiments on humans.

First of all, how does he know? How do they know? How does anyone know? Do they have a private phone line to the deity so that they can get updates on what sins are mortal and what are venial? Who the hell are they to decide which ‘sins’ are relatively minor and which ones deserve eternal torture by way of punishment? But second, what hateful sadistic shits they are, threatening people with eternal torture at all. Don’t forget, Ratzinger told us just a year or so ago (I don’t have time to look it up at the moment) that hell isn’t just some abstract but comfortable thing, it is literal physical torture; he wanted us to be clear about that. And we’re supposed to think of them as Good, because they’re Christian. They’re not Good; they’re evil. The whole idea of hell is evil, and this business of using it to try to coerce people into obeying a church is…simply disgusting, that’s all.

And of course using it to threaten scientists doing research that will help people with horrible medical problems is beneath contempt. The Vatican sucks.

I have a question for you, basically about terminology. Here is a quoted passage, which I have never understood.

Should religious organizations and their members be treated as unequal under the law for certain purposes connected with gender? US constitutional law has standardly granted special latitude to religion, by contrast with other forms of commitment and affiliation. Religious reasons for exemption from military service, or for refusing to work on a particular day, are granted a latitude that is not granted to other forms of conscientious commitment, such as the familial or the artistic or even the ethical. This remains controversial for the way it appears to privilege religion over nonreligion and thus, it might seem, to violate the Establishment Clause…[S]uch privileges given to religion, though highly contestable, can be strongly supported by pointing to the special importance of liberty of conscience as a fundamental right and the consequent need to give religious freedom special protection…

It may be obvious what I don’t understand. If liberty of conscience has special importance, why is that a reason for privileging religion while not privileging other forms of conscientious commitment? They all have to do with liberty of conscience, right? If so, why is liberty of conscience in the concluding sentence taken to refer to religion and not other forms of conscientious commitment? Perhaps I’m wrong and liberty of conscience actually does refer only to religion – but if so, why? Surely ‘conscience’ doesn’t mean ‘religious conscience’ so why would liberty of conscience refer only to religion? Help me out here.