Author: Ophelia Benson

So, Charlie Gere.

I find Jo Glanville’s defence of the publication of Aisha, the Jewel of Medina as an act of courage on the part of the publisher ridiculous. Would she be so ready to describe as an act of courage a decision to publish a book denying the Holocaust, or advocating paedophilia, or race hate, or antisemitism, or violence against women? Probably not.

No, probably not, but what does that tell us? More than the trivial conclusion that Gere draws, which is that ‘there are limits to her conception of freedom of speech.’ Yes of course there are, but the point is not that there are no such limits, the point is that the limits should be as narrow as possible not as broad as possible, and that that entails making judgments about what kinds of limits there should be and what kinds of reasons should be offered and accepted for drawing those limits where we do. Gere’s question is useless for that purpose, because the examples he gives are all different in kind from the example of a novel about Aisha. A book denying the Holocaust is likely to be in the service of a larger and more dangerous – more genuinely harmful – agenda. A book advocating paedophilia could cause real harm to real children, as could a book advocating race hate or violence against women. A novel about Aisha isn’t like that. So it’s a stupid comparison. It’s one that Ahmedinijad (among others) is very fond of, but it’s stupid.

The issue with this book and others that have offended Muslims, including The Satanic Verses, is that their publication is liable to give Muslims the possibly correct impression that a culture riddled with its own shibboleths, taboos and areas of interdiction does not consider it a problem to offend their sensitivities, not least by trivialising their religion and their culture in works of fiction. This is far worse than being anti-Muslim. It treats Muslim sensitivities as being beneath consideration. No wonder they are angry.

See above. The shibboleths, taboos and areas of interdiction in question are not a matter of ‘offending sensitivities’ or of ‘trivialising’ someone’s culture or religion. Shibboleths of that kind are neither legally binding, nor generally respected, nor (on the whole) backed up by threats and violence.

A more reasonable question for Gere to have asked would have been ‘Would she be so ready to describe as an act of courage a decision to publish a book about Jesus’s love life?’ The first part of the answer would probably be ‘Well no, because there would be no need for courage because there would be no risk involved.’ The second part would probably be ‘But if there were risk involved because of firebombs shoved through the letter box at 2 a.m., then yes, I certainly would.’

In other words, directly advocating violence or crime against people is one thing and discussing a religion (challengingly or rudely or mockingly or however it may be) is another. It’s odd that a guy who does something called ‘Cultural Research’ is confused about this.

Wow.

Before that January day in Bradford, the Left-liberal consensus was notionally on the side of the Muslim community, which in Britain is predominantly Asian. Since that day there has been a creeping racialist antipathy towards Muslims, by the Left. The grounds of their growing hatred are entirely spurious and are represented as religious. The very part of Muslim belief that trespasses on the territory of the secular liberal creed is identified, for that reason alone, as intolerable. That is to say, Muslims are denied the right to take offence when their most holy emblems are deliberately pilloried.

No they’re not – they’re denied the ‘right’ to do things like kill people or torch embassies or threaten people or plot to kill people. Those things are crimes, actually, not ‘rights.’ Of course all the rest of the passage is absurd nonsense too – but life is short, and I have places to go and things to see.

This line of artistic endeavour finds its ultimate expression in Theo van Gogh’s film Submission (a word translating “Islam”). Islam holds the text of the Koran holy, and insists on public modesty in the depiction of women. So why not, the film-maker thought, project the holy words of the Koran on to the exposed body of women? Tee-hee, he chortled in his Dutch way. So van Gogh was killed.

And…the religious columnist Christopher Howse apparently approves? At least, it’s difficult to spot any sign of disapproval in anything he says.

The secularist haters of Islam pretend that that they have a sacred principle of their own, which is freedom of speech, freedom to publish.

Yes, that’s right. We’re funny that way. Of course we wouldn’t (the sensible among us at least) call it a sacred principle, and we would agree that freedom to publish is not completely without limits, but we do have ‘a principle’ that we should be able to publish stories and polemics and disputes about religion and religions, in general and in particular, without being threatened or set on fire or blown up or shot or carved up. Does Christopher Howse not agree?

Susan Haack in Defending Science – Within Reason (p. 286) quotes (in order to dispute) Richard Swinburne:

If God’s existence, justice and intentions became common knowledge, then man’s freedom to choose [to believe or disbelieve] would in effect be vastly curtailed. (Swinburne, The Existence of God p. 244)

What I immediately wondered (not for the first time) on reading that is: why is that important? Why is it even meaningful? Why is belief an issue? And why, being an issue, does it become an issue of freedom? Why is it treated as a test?

We have all kinds of common knowledge – and that’s not seen as a problem. We don’t worry about our freedom to choose to believe or disbelieve various items of common knowledge; why is it different with God? That is, independent of the fact that God is hidden and is not common knowledge?

Given the fact that God is hidden – and that billions of people claim to believe in it anyway – it becomes very difficult to see how to separate the claim about freedom (and other similar claims) from the need to explain the brute inconvenient fact that God is hidden. In my case anyway, it is impossible.

In other words – God is hidden – and this obvious fact is slightly inconvenient (though not as inconvenient as it ought to be) for people who believe in it and want others to believe in it, and espcially for people who want to rebuff and reprove and correct non-believers. That means there is a need for some kind of explanation. What would such an explanation look like? Well, like what Swinburne says. Therefore…it seems likely that that is why Swinburne says it.

1) God is hidden. 2) Non-theists consider this a reason not to believe God exists. 3) Theists need a counter-reason. 4) Therefore theistic explanations of God’s hiddenness are rendered suspect by this motivation.

An explanation can be suspect and still be correct, of course – but to a non-theist all these excuses for God’s non-appearance do tend to sound awfully…carefully crafted to fit the disconcerting and undeniable facts. (We keep inviting God to dinner and it keeps not showing up.)

An argument like this would show its fragility quite readily in real life. ‘You skipped work today, you’re fired.’ ‘No, I was there.’ ‘No you weren’t!’ ‘Yes I was, it’s just that we kept missing each other.’ ‘Uh huh – that’s a little too convenient – you’re fired.’

An explanation that is too convenient in that way is suspect.

The European Federation of Catholic Medical Associations issued a statement

at the conclusion of its 11th annual congress expressing its firm commitment to the defense of life in response to the threats of abortion, euthanasia, genetic manipulation, the creation of human embryos, and others…[T]hey stressed that ethical norms and principles precede civil laws, which should be influenced by natural law and the teaching of the Church. They went on to state that decisions about “the medical treatment for patients who put their trust in us should be guided above all by our conscience. Moral evaluation of medical practice should not be based on superficial opinions or the latest tendencies, but rather on the sensibleness of a conscience formed according to the objective ethical norms common to all people and constantly defended by the Church.”

What is the difference? What is the difference between ‘superficial opinions’ and ‘the latest tendencies’ on the one hand and objective ethical norms on the other? And how do the Catholic doctors know what the difference is? And how do they tell? How, exactly, do they distinguish between the two? What exactly is that silly line-up of bollocks supposed to mean?

What it appears to mean, to an outsider at least, is simply ‘norms that we don’t like’ on the one hand and ‘norms that we do like’ on the other hand, dressed up as something detectable with fine Catholic instruments.

After emphasizing the spotless moral character that a doctor should have, they noted that “the source and foundation of ethical norms is the inalienable dignity of the human person throughout his or her life, from conception to natural death.”

Natural death? So they’re putting their imprimatur on natural death now? So we are to take it that Catholic doctors from now on will refuse to treat any illness that could, if left untreated, cause natural death? That’s a little off-putting.