Author: Ophelia Benson

A self-referential moment. Beg pardon. But there’s some amusement value in it (well I think so at least). Plus of course there’s the flogging aspect, and after all, the less the book sells, the sooner I will have to go out and pluck chickens for a living, after which I will be far too tired and chickeny to mess around with B&W.

So there are some reviews. There’s this one at Mugged by Reality – which is quite funny because he quotes the outraged review at Amazon and then says this:

I actually came across the book by accident. I was perusing Harry’s Place and inadvertently clicked on the Amazon link in his sidebar.
‘Hmmm’, I thought as I scanned the synopsis, ‘that looks pretty groovy, I’ll put it on my Christmas wants list’.
However, reading the above review prompted me to rush out to buy the thing straight away.

That does make me laugh. The reviewer at Amazon does tip his hand a little – or apparently more than a little.

There’s also Backword Dave who finds himself reading the Morning Star.

One of the problems of being on the “left” is the feeling of “I ought to support them.” I see a lonely copy of the Morning Star on the last rung of the paper rack of my local shop and I feel that someone should buy it out of solidarity. (I never have.) Still, they give a very decent review to The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense.

And then there’s Jalan-Jalan, also reading the Morning Star.

I don’t normally read the Morning Star but a book review of theirs caught my eye which makes me feel glad that I read the Morning Star. It’s for the book, The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense which I hope someone will give me as a new year present.

Well I hope someone does! As a matter of fact I hope a few thousand people do.

Well here’s an oddity (the air is thick with oddities these days) – someone arguing for more clarity, an end to muddling through, an awareness of tensions and conflicts and the need for hard choices – and doing it by means of surprisingly muddled mushy unclear woolly language. That seems like a peculiar way to argue for clear thinking.

The conflict played out in Birmingham, and elsewhere every day, is between two values – one that liberals have cherished for centuries and another acquired much more recently. The ancient, almost defining liberal ideal is freedom: of expression, of movement, of protest. The newer value is an approach to society’s minorities that aims to go beyond mere tolerance, and reaches for understanding and sensitivity. Today’s good liberal aims to be both. Stop one in the street and ask if artists should have the right to say what they like, and the answer will be yes. Ask if Muslims or Sikhs or Jews have the right to have their feelings respected, their differences understood, and the answer will be yes again.

Bullshit. If Jonathan Freedland stopped me in the street and asked me if artists should have the right to say what they like, my answer would not be yes, and (I certainly hope) neither would a lot of people’s, good liberals and good radicals and possibly even some good libertarians. That’s a ridiculous way to frame the question; he just oversimplifies his own argument in order to make us see it in his terms. But his terms aren’t the right terms. And then if he asked me the second question, if Muslims or Sikhs or Jews have the right to have their feelings respected, their differences understood, my answer again would not be yes. It would be “What do you mean by ‘feelings’? What do you mean by ‘respected,’ what do you mean by ‘differences,’ what do you mean by ‘understood’? And what kind of feelings, on what subjects? And what kind of differences, about what kinds of actions and practices? And why Muslims or Sikhs or Jews? Why not everyone? What are you proposing – that Muslims or Sikhs or Jews ought to have their ‘feelings respected’ while atheists or Buddhists or non-adjectival people ought not to? Why are you asking me such an inane, meaningless question? What about you? Do you think chess players or runners or train-spotters ought to have their feelings respected and their differences understood?”

In other words, Freedland is doing what ‘good liberals’ so often do in this kind of discussion: he’s wrapping his meaning in layers of protective fuzz so that we won’t quite grasp what it is we’re assenting to. In a sense, of course, I think everyone’s ‘feelings’ should be ‘respected’ – in pretty much the most basic uncontroversial empty sense one can think of. Other things being equal, people ought not to be gratuitously or rudely challenged or insulted. As a rule, and depending on the situation, people ought to be treated politely and with forebearance. But those qualifications and stipulations are necessary. Once we get down to specifics, things are not so easy. Some ‘Muslims’ no doubt ‘feel’ that the impending stoning to death of Hajiyeh Esmaelvand is a fine thing and should proceed as scheduled. Do I ‘respect’ that feeling? No. Do I think it ought to be ‘respected’? No. So what is the point of even asking such a damn silly empty meaningless question then? Well, it’s what I said: to make the subject seem simpler than it is, even though the column as a whole is arguing for recognizing the very complexity the wording of those questions works to conceal. Why is that? Have people become so habituated to fuzzy rhetoric that they can’t notice it even when it is their very subject? If so – well, it’s unfortunate, that’s all.

I am having to make some of these awkward choices myself. All of my instincts set me against the government’s proposed move to outlaw incitement to religious hatred. An admirer of America’s first amendment, I start as an absolutist on free speech: let everyone say what they want.

Really? Are you sure? What if somone (part of everyone) wants to say ‘that playwright should be killed!’ Or that novelist should be killed, or that film-maker should be killed, or that apostate, or that whoring woman, or that daughter who dishonored her family by refusing to marry the man her parents told her to marry? Not to mention of course ‘those Croations should be killed,’ or those Kosovars, or those Tutsis, or those intellectuals, or those infidels.

No, he goes on to say that he’s not sure, because he approves of the results of the ban on incitement to racial hatred. But ‘let everyone say what they want’ just seems so simple-minded to begin with. Why begin from there? (Yes, I know free speech absolutists exist, I’ve been arguing with them for years. But I think that’s a simple-minded position to start from.)

If I don’t want the law which effected that change repealed, then logic demands I should want it extended to everyone who needs protection. If it’s good for black, Sikh and Jewish Britons, then it can hardly be denied to Hindus and Muslims. (To say the first group is racial while the latter is religious is to make a distinction that does not fit the real world.)

Everyone who needs protection is just everyone. Period. Just as with the silly question about whether we think Muslims or Sikhs or Jews have the right to have their feelings respected. Other things being equal, everyone has that right. Either everyone does, or no one does. Perhaps that would be the right answer to Freedland’s question for the good liberal in the street. [judicious stroking of chin] ‘Hmm…yes, Muslims Sikhs and Jews, fine, and possibly vegans as well, but not Hindus or Buddhists or Wiccans. That’s my considered opinion.’ Clarity and rigour, indeed. Hmph.

Just two or three more brief quotations from Wicca. My little solstice present for you.

To discourage a poltergeist from remaining in the house put up a list of chores and tell it that if it is to remain in the house it must earn its keep. If it does not, then you will bring in an exorcist.

Errm – okay. But – um – how do I tell it? Write it at the top of the list of chores? But how do I know if the poltergeist has seen the list of chores? Or that it can read? Should I tell it personally, by announcing it aloud? But how do I know where polty is, or if it’s listening? Do I wait until stuff is flying around the room and then quick like a bunny start shouting – ‘Oi, I’m putting up a list of chores for you to do and you have to do them if you want to stay in the house, because you have to earn your keep!’ (Keep? What keep? Does it eat the food? First I’ve heard of it. I thought it just threw things.) I wish these people would give proper directions. It’s like being told to make a Lady Baltimore cake by putting some flour and eggs and whatnot in a pan and baking it. But at least it does say how to threaten the little bastard. ‘If you don’t, I’m bringing in an exorcist! So if that bathtub is not clean enough to eat a Lady Baltimore cake off by this time tomorrow, you’re outta here!’ Because I really know where to find an exorcist, right? And then there’s the tricky business of deciding which chores to give the poltergeist. Making dinner? Hmm…no. Making the beds? No. Doing the laundry? Well…risky. You can see the problem.

Still practiced by some, alchemy can also be practiced to search for an elixir of youth, a universal cure for all disease , the attainment of eternal life, and other accomplishments.

Yup. It sure can. There is no gainsaying that. That is one true statement. Yes indeedy. That is one true, safe statement – alchemy can indeed be practiced to search for just about anything. A way to travel to the far side of the universe without spilling your coffee, a way to travel to 1600 and get Shakespeare to re-write Hamlet with a part for you in it, a way to turn diamonds into lice and bedbugs into Brazilian tapirs. You can practice alchemy to search for such things every waking minute for the rest of your life if you like. Have fun!

This is from an entry on dark side:

The side of life associated with death, decay, entropy…The dark, while unpleasant, is not inherently evil, though evil can take on aspects of that which is evil. For example, the television and movie characters, the Addams Family, were dark, though certainly not evil.

Uh – oh never mind.

Update: Check out Amardeep Singh’s No False Medicine for as he puts it ‘insider updates.’ Amardeep is a Sikh himself, and not best pleased about all this. This post includes part of an email from a Sikh friend in Birmingham:

I am in Birmingham and have been talking to people who were at the protests on Saturday and I can tell you that the Khalistanis in Britain have scented blood and are not going to step down. They have been inciting people in Gurdwaras and on websites and Punjabi radio stations to come to Birmingham from all four corners of Britain to “protest” outside the theatre. It is the raising of a lynch mob, people are talking about thousands being there, and I can tell you, they have got it in their minds that this is their own personal struggle against the enemies of Sikhism, that they are facing down Aurengzeb, and making the last stand to protect the dharma and the Sikh roop. Having spoken to many of the youth who attended the protest a sense of exhiliration came through that they have the eyes of the world on them, and I asked them specific points about what they would be prepared to do. People said repeatedly that they would not mind if Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti was killed or at least hospitalised because of this, and when I asked them that if they play was not stopped, would you be prepared to burn the theatre down to the ground and they said yes. This has been headline national news on every television and radio station in Britain. Needless to say, it has made Sikhs look like fascists and taliban like in their outlook, a disastrous result for a community that has been previously thought of as hardworking, industrious and creative.

Lynch mobs are so, so, so easily raised. Ironically, of course, that thought is exactly the thought behind the religious hatred law – and surely the lawmakers are not wrong to think that. But the proposed cure seems so likely to do more to encourage ever more lynch mobs than it does to calm them down…

Further updates. Harry’s Place has a good comment on the subject here. Insert Joke Here has one here. And Amardeep has this link to the complaints about Behzti and one to an interesting editorial from Asians in Media.

Well, here we go again. Another victory for religious sensitivity and obscurantism and shutting people up, another defeat for open discussion of religion and religions. Another victory for clerics, another defeat for playwrights, theatres, actors, and playgoers. Another victory for the principle that if discussion of Subject X is ‘offensive’ to certain easily-offended domineering people, then discussion of Subject X gets stopped, and that’s that. Hooray. (Of course, looked at another way, it’s also a victory of a sort for wider dissemination of Subject X. No doubt a lot more people will be at least reading ‘Behzti’ than otherwise would have, even if fewer will be seeing it. But the terrible precedent is still set.) It’s all so obvious. You know what I’m going to say – there’s not even any point in my saying it. So I’ll just quote from the newspaper and BBC reports instead. From the Independent:

Mohan Singh, from the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in south Birmingham, welcomed the decision. But he said the Rep could have avoided the disturbances more than a week ago. “It’s a sad fact but it’s a very good thing that they have seen common sense on the issue,” he told the Press Association. “But the fact of the matter is that it has taken things to become violent before it happened. What precedent does this set? Will it happen again when people think peaceful protest is not going to work? Those are the answers we need. We were in negotiations with the Rep about a week ago and they didn’t budge. That’s when they should have budged.”

Common sense. Right. Stupid of the Birmingham Rep, wasn’t it. Why won’t people see sense. Surely, whenever people produce a play, write a novel, research an article, make a movie, and some other nice people come along and talk to them and negotiate with them and ask them to stop doing that, surely it’s only common sense for the producers and writers and researchers and movie-makers to negotiate back and say ‘Yes, indeed, we see what you mean, and we will stop at once.’ But no! The horrible willful obstinate people at Birmingham Rep didn’t budge. How very rude and disobliging of them. It’s an outrage – and Britain calls itself a democracy!

Then Mr Singh followed up this excellent argument with more good sense and a threat:

He rejected claims they were stifling free speech, adding: “Free speech can go so far. Maybe 5,000 people would have seen this play over the run. Are you going to upset 600,000 thousands Sikhs in Britain and maybe 20 million outside the UK for that? Religion is a very sensitive issue and you should be extremely careful.”

Well exactly. That’s what I mean – it’s democracy. So perhaps five thousand spoiled ponces might have seen the play – while 20.6 million Sikhs got upset! Can you imagine! So no wonder that note of menace creeps in there at the end. You can hardly blame the guy.

From the Guardian:

Earlier Sewa Singh Mandha, the chairman of the Council of Sikh Gurdwaras in Birmingham, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “In a Sikh temple sexual abuse does not take place; kissing and dancing don’t take place; rape doesn’t take place; homosexual activity doesn’t take place; murders do not take place. I am bringing to the attention of the management of the theatre the sensitive nature of the play because by going into the public domain it will cause deep hurt to the Sikh community,” he said. The author Hanif Kureishi, however, defended the Birmingham Rep’s production of the play. He told Today: “I think the Sikh community should be ashamed of the fact that it is destroying theatres. Destroying a theatre is like destroying a temple. Without our culture, we are nothing. Our culture is as crucial to the liberal community as temples are to the religious community.”

‘Deep hurt.’ We’ve heard that kind of thing before. Just a few days ago in fact, when discussing that column by Polly Toynbee.

Iqbal Sacranie of the mainstream Muslim Council of Britain said that linking the Prophet’s name with this crime “will have shocked Muslim readers” who are “calling for safeguards against vilification of dearly cherished beliefs”.

Deep hurt, dearly cherished beliefs. Religious censors are attempting to use emotional and emotive language to make their case. ‘I feel deep hurt, my dearly cherished beliefs are being challenged, therefore you are obliged to shut up.’ That’s how religious censors think. It’s not a good idea to encourage them in this line of thought.

The attack comes as the government attempts to usher through parliament a law against incitement to religious hatred. Although as a monoethnic religious group the Sikh community is already covered by specific race hate legislation, the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris has argued that the proposed law on religious hatred creates a climate in which “any religion’s assertion is that their beliefs, leaders, icons and places of worship are protected from criticism, ridicule or parody”.

Just so. This is one of the problems with the law. Fiona McTaggart tells us that private prosecutions won’t be brought, but what about the encouragement the law gives to this kind of ‘respect my dearly cherished beliefs or else’ line of thinking?

From the BBC account:

A spokesman for the Sikh community in Birmingham, Councillor Chaman Lal, predicted there would have been larger protests had the play’s run continued. He said: “The theatre has made the right decision in response to a peaceful protest. There are no winners or losers – common sense has prevailed.” Cllr Lal did not accept that the theatre had bowed to the threat of violence and mob rule. “We have nothing against freedom of speech, but you do not make a mockery of someone’s faith or beliefs. That is oppression.” Earlier, the theatre said short of “blatant censorship” and cancelling the production, it could not have done more to appease the Sikh community.

Free speech, no problem, but of course that doesn’t mean making a mockery of someone’s faith or beliefs. No. You can talk about anything else you like. Food, sport, some tv shows – um – food…