Author: Ophelia Benson

So the archbishops have changed their minds about not resisting the repeal of the blasphemy laws? They’ve decided to resist after all? Why? Did they look around themselves and decide that religious types don’t interfere with the government enough and they’d better get busy and start meddling?

Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu say in a letter today that the Government should not lightly change laws that, though their day-to-day importance may be small, “nevertheless carry a significant symbolic charge.”

Why yes, they do, and that’s exactly why they should be not only changed but ground into powder and then torched. The significant symbolic charge they carry is that it is Not Permissible to mock or tease or chaff or rally or quiz or fall down laughing at religion. That’s a bad thing to be symbolized, which is why the laws should be ground into powder and then torched.

It should not be capable of interpretation as a secularising move, or as a general licence to attack or insult religious beliefs and believers.

The Anglican church is supposed to be a relatively liberal body, isn’t it? Well – if that’s liberal, what would reactionary look like?

Well quite – if a museum puts on an exhibition you don’t like the sound of, the thing to do is stroll in and threaten the staff with violence if they don’t take it down again. That’s how I take care of these little annoyances. After all it is up to me to decide, isn’t it? Therefore it’s also up to them – except of course when I get there first.

Whereas the mere spectre of possible attacks was enough to get the Deutsche Oper to put the kibosh on a Mozart opera in 2006, Berlin’s Galerie Nord closed its doors this week after a group of Muslims walked into the gallery and threatened staff with violence.

Thus cultural life is enriched bit by bit.

The gallery is now in negotiations with the Berlin authorities in a bid to get 24-hour police protection, so that the exhibition can be re-opened, hopefully by Tuesday of next week. Egesborg said it was vital the exhibition continue. “If the radical Muslims are successful, then it means a mob can curate an exhibition in a museum,” he said. “It would be dangerous for art in Europe, as it would give a good example of what threats can achieve.” He saw a parallel in the furore over the publication of the Muhammad caricatures in Danish newspapers. “Radical Muslims think they can influence what is printed in the newspapers or shown in galleries,” he said. “That is very dangerous. It is a road that leads to hell.”

The hell of radical Muslims curating all museum exhibitions, editing all media, librarianing all libraries – vetoing all cultural products they don’t like. Let’s not have that; it sounds nasty.

Speaking of Katha Pollitt – she made an interesting comment on the Women’s Studies list yesterday, one which is partly relevant to all this stuff about respect and worry.

Actually I think powerful women make many women quite uncomfortable.
Just look at what women say about Hillary Clinton — she’s
‘ambitious,’ “cold,” “I just don’t like her,’ etc. I’m not saying a
feminist has to vote for Hillary, but the kinds of things so many
women hold against her are quite revealing of their own discomfort
with a woman who steps out of the nice-nice nurturing deferential role.

That comment inspired me to reply, in a way also relevant to all this stuff.

Ain’t it the truth. Which is why some of us feel a kind of duty to be abrasive, brisk, chilly, sarcastic, even at times hostile and aggressive. We have to stake out that territory.

I’m serious about that. I think there aren’t nearly enough women around who step out of the nice-nice nurturing deferential role. Mind you, I would be abrasive and hostile even if there were, even if there were no such discomfort, even if I didn’t feel a kind of duty, because it is My Nature. But the fact remains that I think it is a kind of duty. I’m a longstanding fan of Pollitt’s because she is not nice-nice nurturing deferential, and I wish there were more women like her.

I got an enthusiastic reply and a new fan of B&W via that comment, so there are a few of us chilly sarcastic women out there. We do what we can…

The discussion of my hostile and flippant comment on the Secretary General’s advice to ‘respect all religious beliefs’ last week got diverted into irrelevance right at the beginning with talk of laughing at people who pray before dinner, which had nothing at all to do with the subject under discussion; and it went on the way it began, irrelevance piled on irrelevance. Commenters insisted that the Secretary General didn’t really mean what he had said, he meant something else; I kept replying that I was talking about what he had in fact said, only to get more assertions about what he really meant. Commenters insisted that the only alternative to ‘respect’ was laughing at people, ignoring the vast middle ground between those two possibilities. As an example of some of that middle ground I mentioned Katha Pollitt and suggested that she doesn’t pause to ask herself if every thought might cause some reader to feel disrespected, only to be told (with mystifying confidence) that Katha Pollitt doesn’t want people to feel disrespected. How ‘Serafina’ knows that is a question for the annals of The Journal of Other Minds, but be that as it may, I had a look through Pollitt’s Subject to Debate and found plenty of comments that (note that I say this with energetic approval) could be seen by the hypervigilant as failing to worry about whether or not some readers might feel disrespected.

[C]ommunitarianism offers a particular social ministratum – middleaged white academics with children and fading memories of once having been happier and more liberal – a way to see themselves as political actors without having to do much that is difficult, boring, scary or expensive…What is communitarianism, finally, but Republicanism for Democrats – Reaganism with a human face? It’s the perfect philosophy for our emerging one-party state…[‘Communitarianism No’ The Nation 1994; Subject to Debate pp 15-6]

Mostly, though, chapel made me loathe religion…I know believers too who don’t trouble themselves over the outmoded or bloodthirsty bits of their faith; they just take what they want and leave the rest. Not me. For me, religion is serious business – a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom. My family may have made me a nonbeliever, but it took chapel to make me an atheist. [‘School Prayer? By All Means’ The Nation 1994; Subject to Debate p. 29]

The state-backed religions of Western Europe are pallid affairs compared with our robust industry of Virgin-spotters, tongues-speakers and Mitzvah-mobilers. Where is the English Jimmy Swaggart, the French billboard in whose depicted bowl of spaghetti thousands claim to discern the face of Christ?…[Y]ou could say that when the state underwrites religion the buried links between these two forms of social control stand too clearly revealed for modern, let alone postmodern, people to accept…It’s never too early for the young to take the measure of the forces arrayed against those who would think for themselves…Prayer in the schools will rid us of the bland no-offense ecumenism that is so infuriating to us anticlericals: Oh, so now you say Jews didn’t kill Christ – a little on the late side, isn’t it? [Ibid]

Better a panhandler than the Hare Krishna costumed like Bozo the Clown, who is louder than any panhandler and much more obnoxious, or that beautiful black nun, doomed to spend her rapidly fading youth silently holding her bowl near the Times Square token booth. At least with panhandlers, you know your money isn’t going to build ashrams or convert the heathen. [‘Beggar’s Opera’ The Nation 1994; Subject to Debate p 33]

See what I mean? It’s not what you’d call gentle, or respectful of religious beliefs, or noticeably concerned about the possibility of making believers or Hare Krishnas or nuns or communitarians or fans of Jimmy Swaggart or anyone else feel “disrespected”. And what a good thing it’s not!

So what was all the huffing and puffing about? It wasn’t (we were assured) about the kind of thing Katha Pollitt writes – good heavens no – so what was it about then? If (as we were assured) Pollitt is fine, Pollitt is okay, Pollitt is not the kind of writer we are to understand as the kind who is disrespectful – then there is no disagreement, and all those hymns to respect and not laughing at people praying were a complete waste of time, because we’re all on the same page. I’m defending everyone’s right – moral as well as legal – to write this kind of thing, not the BNP or God Hates Fags kind of thing. So what was everyone else defending? Beats the hell out of me.

More exciting news from Iran.

The Iranian parliament is discussing a new penal code, under which citizens who convert [to] another religion will face execution…Besides apostates, the code also [include?]s the death penalty for a[n]yone who ‘insults the Prophet’.

Ah. Well…perhaps this idea that people should be allowed to leave a religion without having their heads separated from their shoulders is just some old hegemonic notion of western Orientalists, or something.

Dr Nazila Ghanea, lecturer in human rights law at Oxford university and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Religion and Human Rights, said: ‘The laws will give the Iranian government legal grounds to resort to taking the lives of any of its citizens who choose to adopt a religion other than Islam. The code is a gross violation by the Islamic Republic of Iran of its obligations as a party to a number of international human rights instruments, particularly those relating to freedom of religion or belief.’

Oh. Well, maybe Iran has changed its mind since it signed up to those instruments. Can’t people change their minds around here? Not apostates of course! They can’t! But governments that are party to international human rights instruments – they can. It’s their human right.

It’s all carefully spelled out. They can’t say fairer than that, can they.

Article 225-1: Any Muslim who clearly announces that he/she has left Islam and declares blasphemy is an Apostate…Article 225-7: Punishment for an Innate Apostate is death. Article 225-8: Punishment for a Parental Apostate is death, but after the final sentencing for three days he/she would be guided to the right path and encouraged to recant his/her belief and if he/she refused, the death penalty would be carried out…Article 225-11: Whoever claims to be a Prophet is sentenced to death, and any Muslim who invents a heresy in the religion and creates a sect based on that which is contrary to the obligations and necessities of Islam, is considered an apostate.

And don’t you forget it.