Author: Ophelia Benson

Anthropologists are reliable sources of you have to understandism. Pnina Werbner does her bit.

There are some lessons (the British) learned from “The Satanic Verses” that I’m afraid others in Europe still need to learn. One of them is the simple lesson that blasphemy is a double-edged sword.

Okay, now it’s time for anthropologists to learn a simple lesson: words like ‘blasphemy’ and ‘haram’ and ‘apostasy’ don’t apply to people who don’t subscribe to the religion in question. It’s a rather disgusting form of coercion to pretend that they do.

But there was no gain on either side in terms of reaching mutual tolerance or understanding. The novel just inflamed peoples’ feelings – Muslims felt they had been disrespected and their feelings disregarded.

Another simple lesson for anthropologists. Here it is. So what. Is every novel ever written supposed to respect the feelings – the alleged feelings, the attributed feelings, the assumed feelings, the guessed-at in advance feelings – of ‘Muslims’? If so, does that apply to the feelings of everyone? Might that be a tall order? Such a tall order that compliance would simply shut down novel-writing entirely? And by extension all writing and all thought? Do you really – academic that you are – want to say that ‘feelings’ about writings should necessarily be respected? If you do, I think you’re an imbecile. That’s a simple lesson.

The Satanic Verses affair taught people in Britain a lesson about the depth of religious feelings among Muslims. Although the affair died down, it remains an underlying, painful memory for British Muslims even today.

Yes. It did. And not only people in Britain – people over here, too, and other places as well. It taught us the lesson that religious zealots were willing to threaten and kill people over a novel they didn’t like. It taught us to fear and despise people like that. It did not, however, teach us to admire or respect or love or think good the ‘depth of religious feelings among Muslims’. It’s not clear whether Werbner grasped that part of the lesson or not.

Even if an artist had failed to find someone to illustrate a children’s book on the Prophet for fear of reprisals, this does not constitute an attack on freedom of speech. It could be construed as recognition and respect for the sacred taboos of another religion.

Yes, it could, and that is a good thing why, exactly? Because all ‘sacred taboos’ are benign and harmless? Are they?

It is a matter of having some kind of voluntary understanding – one that says that the price one pays for a sort of entertaining bit of journalism is not worth it because there are people who will feel genuinely offended. It is difficult for us Westerners with our secular upbringing to understand and sympathize with the depth of feeling of believers. Their passionate belief is puzzling and alien to us.

Here’s another simple lesson. We’re not required to sympathize. Understand, yes, but sympathize, no. I don’t sympathize with the depth of feeling that motivates school boards to order science teachers to read religious statements to their students, or to murder abortion doctors, just as I don’t sympathize with the depth of feeling of Nazis or Fred Phelps of ‘God Hates Fags’ or people who think Howdy Doody is God’s messenger. I don’t, and I don’t have to. Sympathy is not the right subject here, because the beliefs in question have content, and we are allowed to evaluate the content. We are not obliged to give sight-unseen unconditional pre-judgment sympathy to any and all feelings provided they are deep enough, and as a matter of fact we ought not to do that, we ought to do the opposite. That’s not hard to understand, is it? Even for us with our secular upbringing that makes it so hard for us to understand things?

Yes. I wondered about this a great deal at the time.

Girls do not figure in this “youth uprising”. Stones were thrown in Paris in 1968, too. But the barricades were occupied by men and women, even if the leaders were all men…It is all the more surprising that alongside the justified focus in the French and international press on the issue of racism, the sexism or machismo of these riots has barely been touched on.

Exactly. The riots were discussed as if they were – in however noisy or violent or overenthusiastic a way – representative of Muslim feeling in general. But why assume that? Why not think a little harder and realize that the rioters are all young males, and that not all Muslims are young males, and that violent young males don’t necessarily represent anyone but themselves? And especially, they don’t represent women.

The girls and women in these areas have long been living in fear. As well as being victims of violence within their own families more frequently than the average French woman, they are also at greater risk on the street. The Islamist-influenced boys and men divide women into two categories: saints and whores. The saints stay at home, the whores go out into the world. And they are made to pay. The price ranges from brutal street robberies, that affect women with striking frequency, through to what is called the ‘rotonde’: the form of gang rape to which Kahina’s sister Sohane was also subjected…[W]hen it gets dark and the rioting begins, there is not a single woman left on the streets. For on fiery nights like these, the “whores” are in just as much danger as the “sons of whores”.

Why did that go so unmentioned last autumn? Because it would or could have been seen as defending the discrimination and deprivation of the banlieus? Maybe. But that doesn’t do the girls and women much good, and they are after all half the people in question.

I did hear something about it on the BBC quite recently – well after the riots – a month or so ago, on the World Service, which irritates me so often. A reporter did an in-depth story on the subject, and talked to a group of girls at a community center. Why was it only young men in the riots? the reporter asked them. Because they don’t think, the girls said, they don’t think about what they’re doing, they just react, they don’t care if they hurt people or destroy things. There wasn’t a trace of sympathy or solidarity or admiration in their voices; they didn’t see the rioters as activists working for their betterment; they saw them as a lot of silly violent jerks. And then the reporter asked about male dominance in general, and those girls cut loose. They are angry, and it’s the men around them they’re angry at. ‘Our honour is in our bodies,’ one girl said indignantly. ‘Our bodies are our honour – they don’t belong to us.’

It’s extremely odd that commentary by outsiders so often – so nearly always – assumes that ‘Muslims’ all have the same basic interests and all think and feel as one. This kind of gulf isn’t small or trivial, yet it gets ignored. Very, very odd. Also stupid. Women may be the only hope.

The credulity-straining oxymoronism continues. You have freedom of speech but only if you don’t use it; you used it; you’re fired; also, we all hate you.

A student editor at the University of Cardiff found out his mistake when he published one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Somebody really ought to test his urine – what other explanation could there be?

A student union spokeswoman said Tom Wellingham, the editor of the paper, which won newspaper of the year at last year’s Guardian’s Student Media Awards, had been suspended alongside three other journalists. “The editorial team enjoy the normal freedoms and independence associated with the press in the UK, and are expected to exercise those freedoms with responsibility, due care and judgment,” she said.

There you are – you can’t say fairer than that. The editorial team enjoy the normal freedoms and independence associated with the press in the UK, so if they publish anything blasphemous and offensive, out they go. Obviously ‘normal freedoms and independence’ has nothing whatever to do with publishing anything that would offend anyone – good heavens, what an idea! Great hopping Christ almighty, newspapers mustn’t offend people! Fuck, no! Not ever; not under any; not no matter how much; not possibly. No, no, no. Everything that appears in a newspaper must be as anodyne and bland and blancmange-like and pallid and limp and devoid of interest or excitement and emollient and soothing as a warm bath to the tune of a lullaby. Obviously. Because looky here, newspapers go into people’s houses, I mean their homes, their lovely tasteful homes, where they eat and sleep and have family values. Newspapers can go into family rooms! Do you realize that? They can go right straight into family rooms, and be seen by family people, who would be upset and distraught and all twisted up inside if they saw something offensive. Had you thought of that? No, I didn’t think so. Well I bet it makes things look a little different, doesn’t it! It makes it pretty dang obvious why nothing offensive can go in newspapers. That still leaves plenty that can. Recipes, and how to make the home look pretty (Martha Stewarty kind of thing), and sports (if there aren’t drugs or swearing or rape or – well maybe not so much sports), and nice cartoons, like that nice Family Circus, and what’s on tv, if it’s not too offensive. That’s plenty.

The students’ union very much regrets any upset caused or disrespect shown by the publication of the controversial cartoon and has taken immediate action by promptly withdrawing all copies of this week’s edition of Gair Rhydd at the earliest moment possible.

Because that’s what you do when something in a newspaper offends anyone – you yank it back quick as winking, and then you tear it up into little tiny minuscule pieces, and you give them to the gerbils. Always. Every time. One peep from Someone Offended, and into the chipper that edition goes.

The students’ union has launched an investigation into how the images came to be published in the paper, which has a potential readership of more than 21,000 students.

Good. Good, good. I feel so reassured. I feel so much happier and more peaceful. Otherwise I would wonder – how, how, how could such a thing happen? Not because the editor wanted to publish something that was in the news – of course not! So how then? But it’s all right, because the union has launched (with a bottle of champagne, I hope) an investigation. I hope they have the handcuffs in reach at all times.

Local councillor Joe Carter, whose Cathays constituency houses the students’ union, described the publication of the cartoon as a “controversial and risky manoeuvre. They were wise to pull it but I’m surprised they ran it in the first place. There’s a very strong argument about freedom of the press versus tolerance of religion. We have to have tolerance of people’s views and culture,” he told icwales.co.uk.

There’s a very strong argument, which can be decided in only one way – so it’s actually not so much an argument, as a piece of dogma. We have to have tolerance of people’s views and culture – because if we don’t, there’s that beheading thing.

Ashgar Ali, the chairman of Cardiff’s Medina mosque, criticised the publication. “You can’t play with someone’s religion,” he told the website. “The Muslim students at the university are going to be upset. Pulling it as soon as possible was the right thing to do.”

You can’t play with someone’s religion. You can’t upset people. So no coverage of war, politics, the arts, economics, science – nothing that will upset people. That would lead to mere anarchy of the press. Understand?

There’s also the Vatican’s view of this, of course.

The right of freedom of thought and of expression, as contained in the Declaration of Human Rights, cannot imply the right to offend the religious feelings of believers.

Well – so much for the Declaration of Human Rights then. How fortunate to have a supreme court in the shape of the Vatican.

Somebody ought to hurry up and write that into the Declaration, so that we can all be working from the same page. And at the same time (efficiency is good) somebody ought to add that new right we heard about the other day – from the editor of the Indpendent, it was, not Louise Arbour, as I mistakenly said in comments (I heard it on the World Service, it was early in the morning, I wasn’t firing on all cylinders yet) – the right not to be offended. Let’s make it official. The right of freedom of thought and of expression cannot and shall not and must not imply the right to offend the religious feelings of believers. And the right of every individual not to be offended is hereby asserted to be absolute and inviolable. Have a nice day.

David Hadley and Chris Whiley pointed out in comments that my doubts about cartoons as a genre could be considered all wrong. Yes. Maybe I only meant bad single panel cartoons. I’m not sure.

But it was basically a side point anyway; the central point remains. No, the imaginary ‘right’ to protect religious beliefs from perceived insult and mockery does not trump the right to insult and mock religious beliefs. It’s not 1520, nor yet 1640, and people who have the good fortune not to live in theocracies get to act accordingly, let the Pope say what he will.

Munira Mirza says terrific things on the subject.

Censorship in the West bolsters the moral authority of leaders in the Middle East to censor their own citizens. Indeed, the religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and Palestine have been opportunistic in using the story as a way of galvanising support and reinforcing the view that only they can protect Muslims from victimisation. Counter to the claims of unelected ‘community leaders’, Muslims do not benefit from censorship.

And counter to the claims or implicit assumptions of supporters of unelected ‘community leaders’, too. The assumption seems to be remarkably widespread that all Muslims, and (especially, and especially mistakenly) all people who live in what are sloppily and misleadingly called ‘Muslim countries’ or ‘the Muslim world’ think with one thought about this issue. But that’s a mistaken assumption. People really ought to keep in mind that a lot of people in ‘Muslim countries’ detest theocrats and religious tyrants, detest them every bit as much as we detest people who want to order public schools to teach creationism and NASA to mention The Designer along with the Big Bang – every bit as much or perhaps a lot more, since the religious tyrants are more powerful and more violent there, and have more searching, detailed, oppressive rules to impose and enforce with beatings and stonings. So the idea that it’s kind or sympathetic or anti-racist to side with the ‘offended’ against the ‘so what if you’re offended’ could well be completely mistaken. We don’t know the stats, because there aren’t polls on the subject in theocracies, and if there were the answers wouldn’t be awfully reliable. But I know people in Pakistan, for instance, who are not at all fond of theocrats. It is my impression that such people are not at all rare.

In Denmark, large numbers of moderate Muslims have sought to oppose the stranglehold of extremist Muslim lobby groups who claim to represent them. In Arhus, they have organised counter-demonstrations. One Muslim city councillor who was involved said: ‘There is a large group of Muslims in this city who want to live in a secular society and adhere to the principle that religion is an issue between them and God and not something that should involve society.’ It turns out that those sympathetic lefty anti-racists who believe censorship will protect Muslims are actually missing the point. Many Muslims want the same freedoms as everyone else to debate, criticise and challenge their religion.

There you are. Unfortunate that so many people so readily assume the opposite.

Unsurprisingly, Hitchens also says many good things.

As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this week’s international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also accidentally accurate. “Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief.” Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does he mean “unacceptable”? That it should be forbidden?

Probably the same thing Jack Straw meant by his waffle. Shut up. Never mind what the First Amendment says; shut up.

Islam makes very large claims for itself…The prohibition on picturing the prophet – who was only another male mammal – is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.

Exactly. And that is exactly why we are so determined to say No, and so infuriated that so many people insist on not saying No, insist on submitting, instead. No – no Submission, thank you.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find “offensive.” ( By the way, hasn’t the word “offensive” become really offensive lately?)

Yes, of course it has. Hitchens was the other half of the conversation when Stephen Fry did his riff on ‘offensive,’ you know.

I will not be told I can’t eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish rumor-fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species.

Exactly. Tantrums – just what I say. No doubt he got the idea from me.

[A]nother reason for condemning the idiots at Foggy Bottom is their assumption, dangerous in many ways, that the first lynch mob on the scene is actually the genuine voice of the people. There’s an insult to Islam, if you like.

Also just what I say. Very good that Hitchens listens to me so attentively.

Suppose that we all agreed to comport ourselves in order to avoid offending the believers? How could we ever be sure that we had taken enough precautions?…Is it not clear, then, that those who are determined to be “offended” will discover a provocation somewhere? We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt…There can be no negotiation under duress or under the threat of blackmail and assassination. And civil society means that free expression trumps the emotions of anyone to whom free expression might be inconvenient. It is depressing to have to restate these obvious precepts, and it is positively outrageous that the administration should have discarded them at the very first sign of a fight.

It is depressing to have to restate these obvious precepts. It’s been a depressing week – all those upturned bellies.