Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Mark Thatcher Gets Suspended Sentence

    The younger generation just can’t get it right.

  • Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti on ‘Behzti’ and the Aftermath

    Religion and art have collided for centuries.

  • Evolution Disclaimer Sticker Must be Removed

    Anti-evolution sticker violates the constitution.

  • Another Undeniable Fact Denied

    Nick Cohen said something interesting in the Observer the other day:

    To take it from the top, the scandal about Britain’s television stations and many of its other cultural institutions is not that they are run by people who are motivated by anything so high-minded as converting the public to a political philosophy, but that they are run by well-educated and very well-paid men and women from the upper-middle class who protect themselves and their privately educated children from competition by feeding the masses mush – the favoured policy of aristocracies down the ages. That they do none the less read liberal newspapers and pretend that their pursuit of profit and market share is a radical blow in the anti-elitist class struggle is merely a sign that they have fooled themselves along with everyone else.

    Yeah. [waves small flag of indeterminate hue and pattern] That’s one of the things I always don’t get about this supposed anti-elitism thing. Why is it considered right-on and good and of the moral high ground to tell everyone that putative ‘high’ culture (which is a very debatable category anyway, and remarkably often consists simply of popular culture that’s older than immediately contemporary popular culture) is ‘elitist’ and therefore tainted and reprehensible? Why is it not considered far more elitist to withold putative ‘high’ culture from people who might well like it and get quite a lot out of it, might in fact have their lives changed by it? Ever seen Ken Branagh’s ‘A Mid-winter’s Tale’? That’s about having one’s life changed by ‘Hamlet,’ as Branagh in fact did. It’s about being perfectly ordinary, not an aristocrat or otherwise privileged or ‘special,’ being a lower-middle-class provincial teenager like millions of others (like Shakespeare himself in his day, like Marlowe, Jonson, Clare, Mary Anne Evans) and being shaken to the roots by a 400 year old play. Does that make Branagh an ‘elitist’? Should he have resisted the life-changing? Should he have told himself that Shakespeare was only for posh people and gone back to Reading and got a job selling paper? Should Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi? Should Keats have stuck to his pills, as John Gibson Lockhart advised him, and leave poetry to the well-born Harrow and Cambridge types like Byron? If not, why is it now considered elitist to think it’s worthwhile to offer people of any class or status a chance to read Lear and The Tale of Genji and the Iliad and Don Quixote?

    Jonathan Rose has a lovely article on this at City Journal. (If you haven’t read Rose’s wonderful book The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, do yourself a favour and read it now. The article should inspire you in that direction.)

    In 1988, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, president of the Modern Language Association, authoritatively stated (as something too obvious to require any evidence) that classic literature was always irrelevant to underprivileged people who were not classically educated. It was, she asserted, an undeniable “fact that Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare do not figure significantly in the personal economies of these people, do not perform individual or social functions that gratify their interests, do not have value for them.“

    Rose gives many examples of why that statement is flat-footed nonsense, and repulsively insular to boot.

    For all his gentle liberalism, even E. M. Forster shared that class prejudice. In his 1910 novel Howards End, the pathetic clerk Leonard Bast tries to acquire a veneer of culture, but his efforts are hopeless…The reality was profoundly different. The founders of Britain’s Labour Party identified Ruskin, more than anyone else, as the author who had electrified their minds and inspired a vision of social justice. At the time, the brightest working-class boys often entered clerkdom, one of the few professions then open to them, and they often brought to their office an incandescent intellectual passion…None of this interested Forster or, for that matter, most literary scholars of the past 25 years. Some of the latter did investigate the responses of readers, but not “common” readers. The audience that mattered, wrote Cornell University deconstructionist Jonathan Culler, consisted of “oneself, one’s students, colleagues, and other critics”—all members of the academic club…As a result, academic literary criticism became ever more ingrown, disengaged from the general public, and fractured into several mutually unintelligible theoretical sects.

    But no matter, because the struggle against ‘elitism’ is in great shape. People are being told to put down that book and turn the tv on, so the hell with the WEA and all its works. Right? Right.

  • Ken Livingstone Defends Yusuf al-Qaradawi

    He’s shared a platform with or met various famous people, therefore…

  • Waterstone’s, Free Speech, the Power of Books

    Bookshop fires employee for saying harsh things about boss on blog.

  • BBC Producer Quits Over ‘Blasphemy’

    Senior producer at Radio 3 resigns in protest at blasphemy in Springer Opera.

  • People are Capable of Rational Thought

    To say the people of Jamaica cannot change values inherited from British colonial era is to infantilise them.

  • Hand Waving

    Some more on fine phrases and their relationship (if any) to parsnip-buttering.

    Yet, as
    we shall see, in the moment of ritual divination the exclusive dualisms
    of subject and object, mind and matter, what is outside and up there
    (including stars) and what is down here and inside (including genes), partially dissolve in awareness of
    cosmic connection. Multiplicity remains, separation remains, but there
    is also relatedness, there is participation. Bringing an anthropological
    perspective to bear on the topic of astrological divination, we see the
    true business of astrology as participation in the greatest dialogue of
    all, the grand conversation of earth and heaven.

    That sounds buttery, right? But what does it mean? Relatedness to what? Participation in what? Jupiter? One of its moons? One of the pieces of ice in the inner ring around Saturn? Or just everything? Every star, every planet orbiting every star, every moon orbiting every planet, every object on every planet and moon, every bit of cosmic dust…? That’s a lot of relatives. A lot of birthday presents and places at the table to worry about.

    Conversation, whether mundane or cosmic, is a learned technique. As
    individuals, we may well, and profitably, spend a lifetime developing
    and perfecting our ability to communicate with our fellows in everyday
    life. As for the cosmic dimension, for countless millennia humankind has
    employed the species-level language of myth to construct a
    trans-personal and trans-cultural world of the collective imagination.
    In that perduring enterprise, it appears that women may well have played
    a pioneering role.

    Ooooh! Did we! Mega-cool. I knew women were good at something – I could just never quite figure out what, but now I know.

    No but seriously. You do notice the hand-waving, right? The ‘exclusive dualisms’ of up there and down here (as in, stars and our little selves, and the funny idea that a star a few billion light years away from us is in a pretty thorough way ‘separate’ from us), relatedness, participation, dialogue, chats between earth and the rest of the universe. You do perceive the basic lack of meaning in that pseudo-profound jabberwocky, yes?

    Here is Ivan Kelly in his excellent article ‘The Concepts of Modern Astrology: a Critique’:

    Astrology as a discipline is a prime example of what happens when advocates consider only confirming evidence for their multitude of conflicting claims with little regard for contrary evidence, which is…’explained away’ …with slogans like ‘the complexity of astrology,’ and ‘astrology is another way of viewing the world.’..Criticisms and serious long-lasting anomalies can also be dealt with by hand-waving in another direction and the elevation of speculation to a futuristic higher plane…The obfuscations ‘orders of influence’ and ‘reflections…showing in their own ways’ are nowhere clarified, hence we are no further in our understanding after being told this than we were before.

    Just so. Hand-waving, fine phrases – much the same thing. Astrologers (and other believers in, erm, alternative ways of knowing, as I’ve been discovering recently) have expansive vocabularies of obfuscatory, incantatory, cloud-assembling words and phrases to serve the hand-waving function.

    A fourth popular response is to say that the phenomena astrology deals with are very subtle and elusive, and what is needed are more creative ways of investigating them…If scientsts had adopted similar attitudes in the face of negative studies and argument, physics would still be Aristotelian.

    Yes and don’t forget the business about the narrowness of reductive materialism and its easy dismissal of, erm, very subtle and elusive somethings.

    Finally, one can say that if researchers are obtaining negative results, they must be doing it wrong. They are using the wrong methodology, the wrong paradigm, or both…West (1991, 1996), for example, contends that scientific criticisms of astrology are irrelevant because astrology is ‘a system of magic,’ where magic is ‘the attempt to master the fundamental laws of resonance that have produced the cosmos.’ He is insufficiently explicit about this ‘system of magic’…

    I love the academic way of putting things. “He is insufficiently explicit about this ‘system of magic’…” – which being interpreted means ‘have you ever heard anything so damn silly in your life?!’ The fundamental laws of resonance – how’s that attempt going, by the way? Making much progress?

  • Minority or Citizen? A Roundtable Discussion

    Worker-communist review: The debate surrounding the banning of conspicuous religious symbols in schools and government workplaces in France have raised some fundamental questions about religious freedom and freedom of choice and dress. Is the ban a restriction on religious freedom, choice and dress? How far must a ban go? Why?

    Hamid Taghvaee: In my view, banning religious symbols in schools and workplaces is completely justified. The ban has nothing to do with religious freedom because it is a social and public ban. In civil societies, religion and religious practices must be free as long as they remain private matters. Civil society can only recognise freedom of religion as a private matter; otherwise it will not be civil society anymore. Any interference of religious practices in the affairs and social activities of civil society should be banned.

    In terms of freedom of dress, it is obvious that the veil is not a kind of dress and has got nothing to do with freedom of choice. Veiling is a religious must for Muslim women; wearing it means abandoning the right to choose any other sort of dress. One can say that by choosing Islam, Muslim women in fact choose not to practice their civil freedom of wearing any kind of dress they like. The veil is a religious obligation and comes with Islam! By selecting Islam, women abandon the right to select their dress.

    Azar Majedi: This is a restriction on the role of religion in the affairs of civil society rather than religious freedom as such. The ban is aiming to restrict the meddling of religion as an institution in the running of the state and society at large.

    Religious freedom is commonly understood as freedom of religious beliefs and practice. However, depending on your point of view, practicing one’s beliefs takes different dimensions. In a secular society, religion is and must be separated from the state, education, citizens’ formal identification and so on; it must be a private matter. Therefore, from a secular point of view, the state and educational system must not represent any particular religion or religious belief. Using religious symbols, such as veiling, would be considered a denial of the principle of secularism, and contradicts the principles of a secular society. By banning religious symbols in public schools and state institutions, one is aiming to safeguard a freer society where religion remains a private affair.

    To get a clearer picture and to avoid any false assumptions, one must look at the history of the development of modern and civil society. Secularism is the product of this process and one of the pillars of such a society. To eradicate the influence of the church from the affairs of the state, to relegate religion to the private sphere and to restrict the role of religion as an institution are all significant achievements of modern society. The French revolution is an important historical moment in this process. These restrictions on religion became necessary in order to materialize the main slogans of this revolution: ‘Freedom and Equality’.

    Going back to your question, this ban is a restriction on religion but not a restriction on individual freedom or individual rights. In my opinion, this ban is a necessary step towards a freer society, and furthermore, I believe restricting religion will help create a more equal society, particularly for women. By restricting religion, society is in a better position to respect individual/citizen rights. However, I believe that this ban is not enough. We should ban religious schools and the veiling of under-aged girls.

    Ali Javadi: I agree that banning conspicuous religious symbols in schools and workplaces is a ‘restriction’ on religious freedom and on the freedom of choice and dress. However, I think we should welcome such restrictions. Allow me to explain. There are many restrictions in society that limit the ‘freedom’ of individuals in some shape or form, such as banning driving while intoxicated, smoking in public buildings or the driving of motorcycles without helmets. Even imposing speed limits on highways in some way limits the freedom of individuals to drive at their chosen speed. However, all these restrictions are necessary and essential to safeguard society and individuals from danger – the danger of being killed by a drunk driver, getting lung disease from second-hand smoke and so on. In the same way, I think society should protect individuals from the influence of religion and the religion industry as we protect ourselves from contagious deadly diseases. The banning of conspicuous religious symbols in workplaces and schools has a similar meaning and intent.

    These restrictions are direct applications of the basic principle of secularism, which calls for the separation of state and religion. No adult should be allowed to wear her/his religion on his/her forehead or sleeves, neither at schools nor at workplaces. Children should be kept completely away from the influence of religion and religious institutions, in the same way that we keep medicine and drugs away from children. Children don’t have any religion. In my opinion, religion should be a private matter and not a state matter. The state should be free from the influence of religion. No individual should be allowed to appear at his/her workplace and in schools with conspicuous religious symbols.

    One should recall that the basic premise of secularism was to eradicate religion and the religion industry’s influence from the most important instruments of society, the state and educational system, particularly as far as the shaping of the lives of individuals and citizens are concerned. If we strive for a free society then freeing society from the influence of religion is a precondition for a free society. Secularism is the first step toward the freedom of society from religion. A free society should be free from religion and superstitions and limitations that this anti-human ideology imposes on humanity.

    I should also mention that while I am for such restrictions, I am not pro an all out ban on all religious expression. I believe in freedom of religion and freedom to campaign against religion. I think a complete ban on religion will allow it to survive longer in the society.

    Finally, I would like to say few words about the nature and character of the fight that we are witnessing in France. The fact of the matter is that the Islamists have spread their reactionary wings in Europe and North America and are openly attacking the secular values of western societies. This is an attack on the progressive achievements of these societies. I believe all secularists, all progressive and socialists should fight these attacks by Islamists.

    Worker-communist Review : In the debate around the banning of religious symbols in France as well as regarding the establishment of a Sharia court in Canada, the issue of minority rights has been raised and that minorities and ‘their’ cultural and religious difference need to be respected in a multicultural and pluralist society. Please comment on minority rights. Isn’t there a conflict between minority and collective rights versus individual rights? What about vis-à-vis the concept of citizenship?

    Hamid Taghvaee: Civil societies are based on the concept of the equal and universal rights of all citizens. Philosophically, it is based on the social identity of human beings as opposed to religious, national, ethnic, and any other – one can say – non-humanistic identities imposed on people in bourgeois societies. Society is not a mosaic of different minorities and cannot be based on a collection of different rights for different groups of people; this sort of concept of society is a huge step backwards to medieval societies. The very concept of the minority is not a modern and civil concept. If every citizen, independent of her or his country of origin, religion, race, gender, and so on and so forth, has the exact same rights, then the concept of minority disappears altogether and there will be no need to recognise special rights for non-existent social groups. The problem with contemporary societies is that they first divide people based on their nationality, religion, ethnicity, race and other non-civil – or if you like pre-modernist – factors and then try to be multi-culturalist and ‘respect’ minority rights and other such nonsense! This is not post-modernism; in fact it is medieval and pre-modernism in the true sense of the word.

    Azar Majedi: If I remember correctly, historically, the concept of minority rights was raised in the US civil rights movement. The struggle against racism and for the recognition of equal rights for black people in the US acknowledged minority rights as a valid and credible legal concept. Later, the concept of respect for minority rights extended to any deprived or disadvantaged section of society, even women. In fact, historically, minority rights meant the recognition of equal and universal rights for all citizens in a given society by extending equal rights to members of a deprived section in the society. In this context, minority rights do not contradict individual or citizen’s rights; on the contrary it extends it to all citizens. Whereas now, in this new context i.e. respect for multi-culturalism, respect for different cultures, or cultural relativism, minority rights has been transformed to imply the rights of a collective, not members of that collective. In reality, this practice is discriminatory. Recognising certain rights for a community or a collective based on culture, race, or religion in essence means depriving the individual members of that collective of the universal laws of the larger society. It gives prevalence to the collective vis-à-vis individuals. Thus, contrary to what the defenders of multi-culturalism like to portray, this practice is not egalitarian but is discriminatory. In a given society, there must exist one set of laws that applies to all citizens, not different laws applying to different communities.

    Ali Javadi: Frankly, I don’t believe in any ‘minority rights’. This is a totally reactionary concept. I am for the general and undeniable rights of individuals in society. These individual rights are universal and should apply to everyone independent of their race, gender, religion, or ethnicity.

    I am sure that individuals have different ‘cultures’ and ‘religions’, however subscribing to a different ‘culture’ or ‘religion’ does not automatically give anyone a different set of rights in society. To understand the full reactionary notion of this concept let me give you an example. In Islam, girls can be forced to marry a man when they become nine years old. Marrying a minor at the age of nine is child molestation or paedophilia and is punished severely in many western societies. ‘Minority rights’ for Islamists would mean allowing little girls to be raped at the age of nine. This is only one aspect of ‘minority rights’. Politically speaking, multi-culturalism is a reactionary theory designed to make concessions and maintain the control of reaction over segments of society referred to as ‘minorities’.

    I am for an egalitarian society, a society in which every individual has equal rights.

    Worker-communist Review: Some say that disregarding the special needs and rights of minorities leads to racism? Is it racist and discriminatory and ‘Islamophobic’ to ban conspicuous religious symbols or oppose a Sharia court in the west?

    Hamid Taghvaee: I think I have already answered this question. I should just add that the opposite is true. Believing in different sets of laws for different groups of people is racism and anybody who respects universal human rights should stand up against it. We say people are people in every corner of the world and have the same needs and ideals. They should therefore have the same rights everywhere. A few hundred years ago for say French revolutionaries, you wouldn’t even need to try to prove this. But unfortunately today for our post-modernists this is not the case. They apparently live in the pre-French revolution era!

    Azar Majedi: I addressed the first part of the question above. I should also mention that I do not recognise the concept of ‘special needs of minorities’. Regarding the second part of the question, I should state that not only it is not racist or discriminatory to oppose the Sharia court in the west or ban conspicuous religious symbols, it is the contrary. Setting up of such courts is a discriminatory and racist act. (I have explained this issue and talked about Islamophobia further in my speech in Canada, which is published in this issue.)

    Ali Javadi: Let me add that some still believe the earth is flat. Nonetheless, these arguments are pure nonsense. Let me ask: Is raping a nine year old child part of the ‘special needs’ of ‘minorities’? Is reducing the status of women to second-class citizens in the society part of ‘minority’ rights? These arguments are designed to advance the cause of Islamists in their reactionary holy war against humanity. In fact it is completely the other way around; dividing society into different ‘groups’ and ‘minorities’ is an inseparable part of a racist approach and notion.

    Worker-communist Review: We are told that banning religious symbols and or a Sharia court will lead to extremism yet we see a rise in extremism in the west as a result of multi-culturalism and in the identification of people with the political Islamic movement. Please comment.

    Hamid Taghvaee: You are right again! The recent dispute on the veil and Sharia in western societies shows the rising role of political Islam in the west; multi-culturalism is its intellectual ally! It is the Trojan horse that opens the gates for this medieval ‘culture’ and Islamic Sharia that tolerates nothing and respects nothing but Allah’s holy laws. Tolerating Sharia in the name of multi-culturalism is like defending Hitler in the name of Jews and gays and other minorities! Islam, like all other religions, recognises no boundaries and ignores and denies human beings and their needs and rights in the name of God (the most recent experiences are the Islamic Republic in Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan). Changing God to ‘Multi-culturalism’ makes no difference. Civilised humanity should stand up against political Islam and its multi-culturalist apologists. This is the only way of respecting and defending any humanistic aspect of any culture in the world.

    Azar Majedi: I do not see any direct relation between these two, i.e. the rise in one would result in the rise or fall of the other. As far as political Islam is concerned, the main characteristic of this movement is extreme reaction, and its main tool for political advancement is resorting to terror. The rise in the identification of certain sections of the society in the west with political Islam, especially among the youth, is a result of a more complex situation. I believe that the existing racism in the west, the socio-economic deprivation of the immigrant population, or citizens from non-western origin, the alienation this section feels and so on create fertile ground for resentment towards the west and western values. On this ground, and in the absence of a strong, progressive and humanitarian anti-racist and pro-integration movement, political Islam has been able to recruit using its aggressive methods of propaganda. Political Islam has been able to take the real resentment and frustration of this section of the population hostage and cash in on it.

    Ali Javadi: I don’t believe there is any correlation between the rise of ‘extremism’ and banning of religious symbols in workplaces and schools. The rise of political Islam and its reactionary holy war does not have much to do with these restrictions.

    Political Islam as a movement emerged in the seventies while the secular-nationalist states in the Middle East and North Africa were in deep political and ideological crisis. The objective of this movement is to restructure political power in these societies in order to have a bigger share. Extremism and terror and maiming of people are the main instruments of this movement to advance its reactionary cause. One should not pay any attention to these arguments.

    The above interview was first published in the Worker-communist Review 1 dated June 2004.

  • Kenan Malik on Exaggerated Islamophobia

    People struggling to defend basic rights within Muslim communities are called racist.

  • Nick Cohen on the Silence About Hadi Salih

    “Do you want priests to be able to control ‘their’ people?” No? Get ready for a fight then.

  • Male Editors Needed to Sexualize Sontag

    Waspish Sontag might have replied: stiffening of male editors no reason to impute rigor to her.

  • Germaine Greer Has Her Reasons

    ‘The British university was a club Greer did not want to remain in.’

  • ‘Christian Voice’ Guy Gets Some Attention

    Admits it was a mistake to publish BBC executives’ home addresses: ‘I’m fallible.’

  • Breathtaking Modesty

    I’ve been reading the Introduction to Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling Down the Moon, by Roy Willis and Patrick Curry. Patrick Curry teaches in the astrology programme at Bath Spa University College which you may have noticed in Flashback. The introduction is truly fascinating, in the way a gangrenous wound might be fascinating to its owner. I’ll quote from it a little, so that you can see what I mean.

    Very little in the debate about astrology is entirely new. The word itself means the ‘word’ (logos) or ‘language’ of the stars, and is now customarily
    contrasted, as a pathetic remnant of primitive superstition, with the academically respectable science of astronomy. This latter term means
    ‘measurement of the stars’, and accurately reflects Galileo’s famous contention that only that which can be measured is truly real. Quantity is primary, quality secondary. This book maintains the converse proposition, daring to privilege sensory quality over a row of digits, and is devoted to investigating and recovering a stellar language of apparently immemorial antiquity; a mode of communication that is part of our common heritage as human beings..This is a primal faculty that seems to be embedded in our genes, ironically the very entities now commonly presented, in the current version of reductive materialism, as the sole and invisible masters of our personal and collective destinies (cf. Dawkins 1989).

    That’s in the first paragraph, and it’s admirably representative of what the introduction is like. The self-attribution of ‘daring’ for instance. Always check your wallet when academics start telling you how brave and daring and bold and fearless they are. The chances are good that that’s the preface to a piece of nonsense. And then that ‘row of digits’ – oh that’s clever. Original, too. I used to say things like that in the 4th grade (and the 7th, and the 10th, and the 12th) to explain why I was so stupid at math. I didn’t want to think it was just because I was stupid at math, now did I.

    And then the absurdity about this ‘primal faculty’ that seems to be embedded in our genes. Eh? It does? It ‘seems’? To whom? You? And anyone else? You just made it up, that’s all. So where does the ‘ironically’ come in? First you invent the idea that chatting with the stars is ’embedded’ in our genes, then you say how ironic when genes are usually such a horrid reductivematerialist item on the scientistic agenda. And then what do you mean ‘sole’? And what’s ‘invisible’ got to do with anything? And what do you mean ‘destinies’? Nothing; you don’t mean anything; you just want to take a very hackneyed slap at a usual suspect.

    Another bit. I’ll leave you to ponder its wonders for yourselves.

    Here let us note certain fundamental consequences of our dialogical
    reading of human nature. In its essential, necessary openness – the
    inherent duality of dialogue which is also, and most fundamentally, a
    many-voiced plurality – this reading permanently guarantees us against
    any possibility of collapse into monolithic solipsism. However, it also
    means we must perforce abandon for ever all ambition to theoretical
    closure, the dream – or nightmare – of a final, all-embracing theory of
    everything, the breathtakingly arrogant project so dear to materialist
    and reductionist science.

    Openness and many-voiced plurality, hurrah; materialist and reductionist science, boo. Isn’t rhetoric great?

  • Another Meek Christian Voice Heard From

    Interesting developments. And people sometimes ask me, whether plaintively or (more often) crossly, why I insist on trying to argue with metaphysical beliefs, which is a futile and even meaningless thing to do. Well, this sort of thing is one reason. Because ‘metaphysical’ beliefs seem to be the kind that prompt people to feel outraged, ‘offended,’ attacked, insulted, disrespected, challenged in the very core of their identity. I think that’s not a mere coincidence, I think it’s kind of the whole point. When people can’t point to evidence in reply to critics and skeptics of their beliefs, what can they do instead? They can of course do nothing, or they can shake their heads over the benighted ways of the heathen and then go on with their lives. But they can also get very worked up. They can find the home phone numbers of BBC executives on the ‘Christian Voice’ website and use them to make threatening and abusive phone calls. And then other believers can express a certain amount of approbation .

    And although I don’t have strong feelings about blasphemy myself – Catholics are used to being scoffed at, and learn to be robust about it – I am glad that many Christians did make their feelings known about the transmission. I don’t say I like to see Roly Keating, the controller of BBC2, having to flee with his wife and family from his home, lest he be subjected to threats or unpleasantness. But it is gratifying when the BBC panjandrums have their cages rattled a little.

    Hmm.

    There is a penalty to be paid if you insult Islam; you may, like Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, end up with your own mocking words pinned bloodily to your chest. But there is no penalty for insulting Christianity – Christians will meekly accept it all (which, inconveniently, is just what the New Testament commands). When Sikh militants successfully got Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti closed at the Birmingham Rep last month, it was certainly an encouragement to offended Christians whose anger against the desecration of their taboos has been simmering away over the years…There is still a big debate to be had on how a society combines freedom of speech with respect for the values of others. An artist has to push boundaries, and offend sometimes; but the artist also has to recognise that there will be consequences of his actions.

    Yeah, like getting stabbed in the chest and then having Mary Kenny gloating over the fact. Now that’s what I call respect for the values of others!

  • Sontag v Derrida

    Hair; obit word-count; celebrity score; president is/is not sad; was/was not silly.

  • ‘The Canon’ Has no Value for the Underprivileged?

    In fact ‘the canon’ enabled ‘the masses’ to become thinking individuals.

  • Mary Kenny Gratified to See BBC Cages Rattled

    And glad to see Christians catch up with Muslims and Sikhs in the cage-rattling game.