Author: Ophelia Benson

Charles Taylor joins the flock.

“The publishing of these caricatures shows a lamentable disrespect,” said Taylor, who elaborated on his views to an audience of nearly 200 people at an event organized by the Heinrich Boell Foundation. “Freedom of speech means you can’t outlaw the printing of these cartoons,” acknowledged Taylor, “but in order to get through this difficult time, we need an informal code where that kind of gratuitous insult can not take place.”

Well doesn’t that sound just like Jack Straw and Sean McCormack and Franco Frattini and the pope and Kofi Annan and that student union spokeswoman at the U of Cardiff – doesn’t that sound just like all of them saying No you may not say that. Not because it’s a lie, or fraudulent, or a falsification, or dangerous, but because – it shows a ‘lamentable disrespect’. Well does it? Does publication of these caricatures show a lamentable disrespect? Some people certainly think so; other people claim to think so because that sounds better than saying they are afraid of getting beaten up or killed; but other people again don’t think so, and think on the contrary that the very idea that it does is more disrespectful than the publication of the caricatures could ever be. But not Taylor, it appears.

Taylor questioned why the editors of the Jyllands-Posten didn’t consider the 100,000 Muslims living in Denmark before they printed the caricatures and the reactionary responses to them.

Um – because that’s not how editors do things? Because they don’t look at material they plan to publish and run through a mental list of the national population complete with figures for each, wondering what they will think of the material in question? Could that be why? Because if that were the way editors did things newspapers would be a little on the empty side? Would have, like, nothing in them? Does Charles Taylor not know that? And has he even looked at the dang cartoons? Has he even asked himself where the lamentable disrespect comes in?

Taylor defended his position against the printing and reprinting of the caricatures, and refuted [she means rebutted] the argument that printing them was somehow a defense of a free press. “Who can take away your press freedom? The German government can, not the government in Damascus. I don’t understand why [people here] are so hypnotized by this idea of press freedom. It’s just raving lunacy,” he said.

Is it. Valuing press freedom is raving lunacy. Is it indeed. Charles Taylor is a name philosopher. Dear oh dear.

I admire freedom as much as the next person, but we all know there are limits, right? There is such a thing as too much. Liberty does not mean license. There are some things no one can be free to do. Cough at the opera, spit in the soup, wear black in summer, and – one other thing.

A man could be sentenced to death after being charged with converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under Afghanistan’s shariah laws, a judge said yesterday…The accused was charged with rejecting Islam…”We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law,” the judge said. “It is an attack on Islam.”

Well of course, and obviously an attack on Islam has to be against the law, and not only that, it has to be a capital crime. Obviously. Because otherwise – well exactly.

Shariah law states that any Muslim who rejects Islam should be sentenced to death, according to Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Repeated attempts to impose a jail sentence were barred.

Well good. Super. None of that panty-waist bleeding-heart Birkenstock-wearing tree-hugging dewey-eyed sympathetic hand-holding poppycock about not killing people for changing their religions. Good for them! How refreshing! They stick to their guns in these Shariah places. Submit to Allah or we’ll kill you. What could be fairer than that?

The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said he had offered to drop the charges if Mr Rahman converted back to Islam, but he refused. “He would have been forgiven if he changed back. But he said he was a Christian and would always remain one,” Mr Wasi said. “We are Muslims and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty.”

Of course he must. Because they are Muslims and becoming a Christian is against their laws. QED. Good night and good luck.

Very good, it’s set up now. I actually got the actual update, so I can tell that it’s working. And people are accepting the invitation or signing up for the first time. Very good. Greetings.

Go here if you want to sign up.

A good day then. That update has been bugging me for six months. How glad I am to have a decent substitute at last. And it was a good day even before that. Someone emailed to give his opinion of the book, and it was – well, you get the idea. People rushed from all directions to apply ice to my head to prevent swelling.

So – after a considerable wait, Google accepted the mailing list and I have – I think – sent out the first update since October. But I think people have to click a link in an email message from Google in order to be added to the new list, so the update probably went to no one at all. And I haven’t even received it myself, despite being thoroughly added, so maybe it doesn’t work at all. So if any of you are on the old list and get an update or alternatively don’t get an update, it would be helpful if you would let me know.

Update (on update – how confusing). No don’t bother yet. They’ve sent me a message saying I don’t have permish, despite having sent me an earlier message saying I did have permish. No doubt we’ll work it out before too long.

The Times notices something that astute, attentive readers of B&W (and you all fit that description) have known for a long time.

Sitting in the airy living room of the spacious modern [house] where Sultan and her husband live, it is hard to believe this small, neatly dressed woman could be at the centre of an international firestorm. Just as improbable is that the most important and controversial critics of Islamic fundamentalism, violence and intolerance are, like Sultan, women, mostly from Islamic countries.

Well it’s not very improbable to us, is it; we’ve known that for years. Years.

They include Ayaan Hirsi Ali…Irshad Manji…Amina Wadud, an African-American convert to Islam and Muslim academic and author, who has infuriated traditional Muslims by leading Friday prayer for Muslims in New York, a role traditionally taken only by male imams. Other Muslim women in the front lines of the clash with Islamic governments are as diverse as Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani village woman who was brutally gang-raped in 2002 as reprisal for an alleged transgression by her 14-year-old brother [which he didn’t commit – OB], and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2003 for her defence of the rights of women and children in fundamentalist Muslim Iran.

Yes; and there are many many more, as you know. Maryam Namazie, Azam Kamguian, Homa Arjomand, Azar Majedi, Marjane Satrapi. The women of ‘Ni Putes ni Soumises’. Mimount Bousakla, the Belgian MP. Serap Cileli, Necla Kelek and Seyran Ates in Germany.

When a broader German public began concerning itself with the parallel Muslim world arising in its midst, it was primarily thanks to three female authors, three rebellious Muslim musketeers: Ates, who in addition to practicing law is the author of “The Great Journey Into the Fire”; Necla Kelek (“The Foreign Bride”); and Serap Cileli (“We’re Your Daughters, Not Your Honor”). About the same age, all three grew up in Germany; they speak German better than many Germans and are educated and successful. But they each had to risk much for their freedom; two of them narrowly escaped Hatun Surucu’s fate…Taking off from their own experiences, the three women describe the grim lives and sadness of Muslim women in that model Western democracy known as Germany.

Of course it’s not really improbable at all that the most important critics of Islamic fundamentalism and violence should be women, since they’re so often at the sharp end of it. Not always. The turning point experience for Wafa Sultan was not gender specific –

…her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said. “They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, ‘God is great!’ ” she said. “At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point.”

But most of them are. Women have every reason to join the resistance.