Author: Ophelia Benson

A reader wondered in comments why B&W hasn’t done more to protest Bush’s torture bill. There are items on it in News, I pointed out. It’s also true that if you type ‘torture’ into B&W’s ‘Search’ you’ll get a lot of items, some of which are about FGM or ‘witchcraft’-related torture in Africa or India, but many of which are about Bush & co. Then there’s the fact that I only have two hands, as the saying goes, and I’m a bit pressed for time right now, and there are a lot of subjects to cover. But having said all that, I have been wanting to mutter something (but have also felt inadequate to the task), or rather squawk something or bark something or howl something or yell in a cracked but deafening voice something. What can I say? That it’s a shameful spectacle, Bush going to Congress to lobby for a torture bill. But who doesn’t already know that?

See David Luban in Slate for adequate muttering.

The Nuremberg Principles, like the entire body of international humanitarian law, will now have no purchase in the war-crimes law of the United States. Who cares whether they were our idea in the first place? Principle VI of the Nuremberg seven defines war crimes as “violations of the laws or customs of war, which include, but are not limited to…ill-treatment of prisoners of war.” Forget “customs of war” – that sounds like customary international law, which has no place in our courts anymore. Forget “ill-treatment” – it’s too vague. Take this one: Principle II, “The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.” Section 8(a)(2) sneers at responsibility under international law.

The Bush administration started sneering at international law almost as soon as it took office. I suppose that’s one reason its reported 90% approval rating right after September 11 has always surprised me. So it goes.

I liked this letter in the Independent. It said what I wanted to say but didn’t have time to say about that Vallely piece.

I found Paul Vallely[‘s] piece disturbing. He states that Theo Van Gogh “routinely described Muslims as ‘goatfuckers’, before one of them murdered him”. Whether or not Van Gogh described Muslims thus, the point is that he was murdered for expressing an opinion in the form of a work of art. Vallely, by emphasising Van Gogh’s “vile”‘ vocabulary, appears almost to be justifying his killing.

Yes. I did want to point that out – and it wasn’t just his emphasizing the vocabulary, it was also the peculiar, sly phrasing – that ‘before one of them murdered him’ sounds unpleasantly pleased, unpleasantly as if he needed to be murdered.

Vallely then gives examples of works of art being self-censored, because of a growing “sensitivity” towards Muslim feelings. These works of art were not self-censored out of sensitivity, but out of fear of a Muslim backlash.

Indeed. Vallely cites as his first illustrative example ‘that a new sensitivity is developing in many quarters’ is the cancellation of ‘Idomeneo’ – but that decision was made strictly on security grounds. Fear is not the same thing as sensitivity, any more than submission is the same thing as peace. There’s something truly repellent about calling a surrender to anticipated threats ‘a new sensitivity’.

There’s some nasty stuff around.

From Paul Vallely in the Independent for instance.

Cherished traditions, such as freedom of speech, the alarmists complain, are being surrendered out of political correctness and appeasement…Everywhere have sprung up champions of freedom of expression and crusaders against religious darkness in the name of Western values.

Everywhere? Not really – not in the places for instance where people who sneer about ‘cherished traditions’ have sprung up, for instance. And some of us don’t defend freedom of speech or resist religious darkness ‘in the name of Western values’ at all, we do it for quite non-geographical reasons.

This is not so much a clash of civilisations as one between religious and secular fundamentalists…Take the article in Le Figaro written by the French high-school philosophy teacher Robert Redeker…The problem was that, for good rhetorical measure, he also added that the Koran was “a book of extraordinary violence”. And that the Prophet Mohamed was “a pitiless warlord”, a “murderer of Jews” and “a master of hate”…The trouble with debate carried out in this adolescent fashion is that it obscures rather than enlightens…it is simply gratuitously offensive.

Is it? How does Vallely know it’s gratuitously offensive as opposed to being Redeker’s considered opinion? That’s not obvious to me, at least.

But in many places there is a growing realisation that freedom of expression is not absolute but needs to be governed by a sense of social responsibility.

In the sense of taking note of the potential for riots, arson and murder, and being silent in consequence. Hooray.

That was a refreshing contrast to the hyperbole about art and free speech being “the elixirs of an enlightened society”. Instead of a power struggle, or a test of wills, it opens the way to a more mature approach. Instead of an emotional debate which closes down rational discourse, it is the way to build common values – ones which recognise the inalienable right to freedom of expression but which, at the same time, demand it be exercised in a measured way.

A more mature approach and a more measured way, meaning, shut up about Islam. Creepy stuff.

And there’s Tariq Ramadan, too, as quoted in the Times:

Some Muslims have accused M Redeker of courting trouble for publicity. Tariq Ramadan, a leading university teacher, said: “The philosophy teacher is free to write what he likes in Le Figaro, but he must know what he wanted — he signed a stupidly provocative text.”

A stupidly provocative text. Saying some not obviously false things about the Koran and the prophet is stupidly provocative, and an open request for death threats. Creepy stuff.

And the Guardian’s article on the subject is very nasty: full of ‘it’s all his fault’ tattletale crap, from the headline ‘French philosophy teacher in hiding after attack on Islam’ to the accusatory subhead Writer calls Muhammad ‘mass-murderer of Jews’ to the body of the story:

But the case has divided opinion in France, with some human rights groups and academics condemning the death-threats but at the same time accusing Mr Redeker of deliberately writing a “stupid” and “nauseating” provocation.

It’s all blame the victim all the time. It’s nasty creepy submissive stuff. Some more secular fundamentalism would be welcome.

Meet Ruth Simmons. She’s a hero of mine – I’ve mentioned her here several times, I think. She’s a hero for a variety of reasons; she forms a little cluster of examples of what can be thought and said and done that it’s popular to say can’t be thought and said and done, so I reach for her often, in different contexts. It all comes from just one interview on the US news show 60 Minutes – her being the twelfth child of Texas sharecroppers, her discovery of books as a child, school as a doorway to a better world, her wide interests. The best bit was when Morley Safer asked her why a black woman would want to take a class in French Renaissance poetry – a question which caused me to scowl in instant fury, and then light up like a Christmas tree at her answer – which was pretty much Terence’s answer: nothing is alien to me. She grandly repudiated the nastly limiting bantustanish assumption behind Safer’s horrible question, saying it’s all for me, everything is open to me. I loved her for that.

Things looked up after the family moved to Houston when she was seven. “The neighbourhood was shabby, there were bars on every corner, and crime and alcoholism were part of the daily routine,” she says. “And yet I was blissfully happy. People bothered to insist I went to school, and I loved it. There was a calm and order that was missing elsewhere in my life. But, above all, there were books. My parents were deeply suspicious about my reading, but for me it opened a window into a different reality, where it was possible for someone like me to be accepted.”

As it did for Fredrick Douglass, for example, which of course is why there was a law against teaching slaves to read. It’s not very popular to think of books and reading that way; all too many people are deeply suspicious about anyone’s reading; it has that whiff of elitism, you know. That’s unfortunate. That closes that window into a different reality.