Author: Ophelia Benson

So the UN rapporteur explains what’s going on and whose fault it is. His report is apparently not available in English yet; this rather right-wing blog translates from the excerpts Politiken and Jyllands-Posten published.

Finally, the Danish government’s first reaction – rejecting to take an official position on the nature and publication of the cartoons while referring to Freedom of Speech as well as rejecting to meet with the ambassadors from the Moslem countries – is symptomatic not only for the political trivialisation of Islamophobia but also, due to its consequences, to the central role those politically responsible have for the national extent and the international consequences in the shape of demonstrations and expressions of Islamophobia…Judicially, the Danish government ought therefore, especially considering its international obligations, to have, respecting Freedom of Speech, taken a position not only on the consequences of the caricatures for its community of 200.000 Moslems but also for the protection of peace and order.

So it’s the Danish government’s fault. It should have met with the ambassadors from ‘the Moslem countries’ and – what? Agreed to arrest, prosecute and punish the cartoonists and editors? Pass new laws banning prophet-mocking? Sworn a great oath that no Dane would ever make a joke about anything to do with Islam from now until the ending of the world?

Their uncompromising defense of a Freedom of Speech without limits or restrictions is not in accordance with the international rules which are based on a necessary balance between Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, especially to combat calls for racial and religious hatred, and which all the member countries of UN have decided are the basic rules for Human Rights. This attitude shows an alarming lack of sensitivity and understanding of the religious conviction and deep emotions of the groups of society in question.

There it is again. Just what Frattini talked about: the ‘very real problem’ of balancing ‘two fundamental freedoms, the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion’. The idea that freedom of religion requires silencing people who would mock or dissent from a particular religion – thus making freedom of religion itself a joke, and a very unfunny one at that, and making freedom of expression an empty phrase. The freedom of religion does not require the ‘freedom’ never to hear anything one might find irritating or disconcerting. That is not the meaning of freedom. That has never been the meaning of freedom. Translating it to that is a shortcut to theocratic tyranny. It takes considerable gall to name censorship and tyranny and silencing ‘freedom’. The idea that religious conviction and ‘deep emotions’ should determine which speech can be free is also not a very good idea.

There are more extensive excerpts here.

More later.

Boy, Conservative MPs don’t talk this way around here. Conservative MPs, conservative Representatives; whatever – anyway they don’t talk like that around here. We should be so lucky.

The whole climate in which religion is discussed has chilled notably in the past few months. After the Danish cartoon controversy, the momentum is with those people who use their particular, narrow faith to silence other voices. If you doubt that’s so, just ask why no British newspaper felt that it could reproduce those cartoons. And reflect on why the British and American governments had to apologise for the offence caused. What were governments doing saying sorry for the independent actions of free citizens? Bending before a very ill wind.

Exactly. And not only apologizing for the independent (and legal, and in the view of rational people, moral) actions of free citizens, but telling us we mustn’t do them. Telling us we were (technically, if we insisted) free to do them, but we mustn’t, that it was unacceptable. That we ‘enjoy’ normal freedoms but that if we exercise them we will be suspended and our newspapers will be seized and shredded. That we have freedom of expression but no duty to gratuitously offend. Not so much bending before an ill wind as falling face down on the ground and then burrowing their way into the earth until nothing but a centimeter of buttock remained visible, before an ill wind.

When the House of Commons debated the Religious Hatred Bill, the argument was made that criminalising what one said about faith would have a chilling effect on debate overall. And, even without the law having been passed, one section of our community has succeeded in just that aim…I’m sure that Trapped in the Closet is wildly offensive. I certainly hope so, anyway. Because the one thing that Scientologists need more than anything else is ridicule. A religion founded by a science-fiction writer in the 1950s which invites its followers to believe in an inter-galactic tyrant called Xenu and offers them the chance to control time itself by becoming “Operating Thetans” deserves nothing less.

It’s funny the way people keep on using the word ‘faith’ without quotation marks. It’s such a horrible word – wouldn’t you think everyone would want to sneer at it with sneer-quotes? But no, people keep on taking it seriously. That’s odd.

So that’s how it went.

On 3 September 2002, the first day of the autumn term, the respondent (then aged nearly 14) went to the school with her brother and another young man. They asked to speak to the head teacher, who was not available, and they spoke to the assistant head teacher, Mr Moore. They insisted that the respondent be allowed to attend the school wearing the long garment she had on that day, which was a long coat-like garment known as a jilbab. They talked of human rights and legal proceedings. Mr Moore felt that their approach was unreasonable and he felt threatened…The young men said they were not prepared to compromise over this issue.

Who was the other young man, and how was he explained to the assistant head teacher, one wonders. How was his presence explained? How was his interest in the matter explained? How was it made clear why it was any of his business what an unrelated thirteen-year-old schoolgirl wore to school? ‘This is a friend of mine’? ‘This is our imam’? ‘This is Knuckles’? ‘This is our “spiritual advisor”‘?

The school was anxious to establish contact with the respondent’s guardian and accordingly, on 4 September 2002, a member of the support team telephoned her house and spoke to a male member of the family who said that the respondent had seen her solicitor and was going to sue the school. On 5 September 2002 Mr Moore telephoned and spoke to the respondent’s brother. Mr Moore inquired why the respondent was not in school. The respondent’s brother told Mr Moore that he (the brother) was not prepared to let the respondent attend school unless she was allowed to wear a long skirt.

He didn’t say whether the other young man was prepared or not. The other young man seems to have disappeared from the story. I wonder what he thinks about it all.

I’ve noticed something interesting. Ever read any Deborah Tannen? Differences in the way women and men use language? Women say ‘sorry’ a lot more than men do, that kind of thing? Somewhat worrying, a tad too similar to the Gilligan-Harding school of feminism which is too inclined to characterize women as big soppy soft-headed damp-palmed lachrymose huggy squishy melty getOFFme fools – but interesting all the same, and she is better at both gathering data and thinking about the data once she’s gathered. Anyway – differences in the way men and women use language. I think I’ve noticed a new one (new in the sense that I hadn’t noticed it before, though Tannen probably has). Here is my theory. [protracted pause to cough and clear throat] When men report on something they’ve done in collaboration with someone else they say ‘I’ve done this (with X).’ Women say ‘X and I have done this.’ I find that really profoundly interesting, and indicative of something or other. (Well, it’s fairly obvious of what, but it would be unkind to spell it out. snigger, snerk.) It reminds me of a guy I used to work with at the zoo. He once did a written report of something we had worked on together – and he used the pronoun ‘I’ throughout. ‘I did this, I did that.’ I pointed out to him that actually we had done this and that – and he was entirely uninterested. There’s something hilariously funny about that, in a tragic sort of way.

(And no, that still does not mean that Mileva Marić collaborated with Einstein!)

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.