Keep looking on the bright side

Look on the bright side of life – offends some Christians

More than once commentator pointed out, last month, the hypocrisy behind the attendance in Paris of so many senior politicians in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and that week’s other murders.

Then again there were the UK media outlets that spoke high and mighty words about ‘free speech’, but thought twice about actually reprinting a Charlie Hebdo cartoon or two – and instead, chose to illustrate reports with pictures (in some cases not even pixilated) of policeman Ahmed Merabet seconds before he was murdered, thus doing the terrorists’ work for them – while some on the British left chose to castigate the victims for ‘racism’.

I didn’t envisage coming back to the question of offence again so quickly, but within the last few days, there has been a further assault on free speech in the UK, with a call to ‘ban racists from social media’.

This came from the all-party Parliamentary inquiry into anti-semitism, days after the Community Security Trust had reported that UK anti-smitic incidents “more than doubled to 1,168 in 2014”.

That itself came against a background of various news reports claiming that anti-semitism was up, with increased numbers of Jewish people thinking of leaving for Israel or the US.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, in the wake of the murders of four Jewish people in a kosher supermarket in Paris, been urging Jewish people to emigrate to Israel.

Mira Bar-Hillel, an Israeli-born freelance writer on property and housing, and Zionism and Israel for the Evening Standard and Independent, took to social media to question some of what this report said.

She pointed out that it listed one serious assault, while most of the other incidents listed were comments – largely but not exclusively – made on social media, relating to or as a result of the attacks by the state of Israel against Gaza last summer.

Some of those were downright nasty; many were very emotional responses to Gaza that didn’t worry too much about taste (whatever that is) or logic; some made comparisons that others may find distasteful or historically inaccurate (ie drawing similarities between Zionism and Nazism), but from what it’s possible to see from the examples provided, while there may be hate and there may be ignorance and there may be a lack of intellectual rigour, there are no examples of incitement to assault or attack.

And what is the wider context of this?

Anti-Muslim incidents in the UK are also apparently on the rise – and these saw a particular spike after the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013.

But it’s not just religion.

Disability hate crime has increased too.

“Home Office statistics reveal police recorded 1,841 reports of disability hate crime in 2012-13, with 810 incidents going to court.

“This led to 349 convictions, but only seven of these resulted in an increased sentence with the victim’s disability being considered an aggravating factor.”

Carlie Hebdo cartoon

A report from last November says that “Scotland Yard [alone] recorded 1,073 violent homophobic offences between January and October, up from 1,007 in 2013 and 1,002 in 2012”.

Other forces around the UK also reported rising figures.

Transphobic hate crime is also on the rise.

It seems to be generally felt that much of the rise is down to increased reporting of issues and greater confidence in the police to deal with them, so the rises in reported attacks may not be as negative as first appears.

But there’s a vast difference between a violent assault – whatever the motive – and being upset by something seen on social media or as graffiti.

We’re back, once again, into the territory of ‘offence’.

For most people, it’s no fun being labeled a bigot. I got it in the neck on social media a couple of times last summer, being accused of being an anti-Semite for daring to challenge Zionists.

But then I count myself in good company, with people such as Bar-Hillel and satirist Jon Stewart, both of whom have spoken out on such issues and both of whom have been accused of anti-Semitism, self-hate and goodness knows what else in an effort to silence them.

Bar-Hillel wrote recently: “The beauty of the antisemitic label (and libel) is that it is impossible to disprove.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem that I see with calling for bans on (in this instance) “racists” using social media.

We have laws to deal with incitement – on any grounds. If people use social – or any other media – to incite on the basis of any hatred, then they can be dealt with by laws that already exist.

But how are we going to define, in law, what constitutes hate speech if it is not incitement?

Who gets to decide?

As Bar-Hillel put it, “it is impossible to disprove”. Or at least it is certainly very difficult on any objective level, if one person genuinely believes that, say, criticism of the state of Israel is a synonym for anti-semitism.

After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, we had some people doing a ‘oh, it was bad, but ...’ routine.

In other words, they found it entirely reasonable for someone to say: ‘oh look, nobody can insult my god (according to my definition/interpretation of theology) because that’s racism (because Muslims are usually brown people’.

That’s the thin end of the wedge (as well as being patronising).

I’ve no desire to see or hear hateful thoughts – but should they be illegal or should it be illegal to voice them in what is supposed to be a free and open space, ie social media?

Don’t criticise anything theological or someone will be offended.

Don’t comment on something political – or someone will be offended.

Don’t satirise something – or someone, somewhere, will take offence.

As noted earlier, hate crimes – including serious, physical assaults – are up against disabled and LGBT people.

The increase in attacks on the former group has been laid – in part at least – at the doorstep of some in the UK mainstream news media, which has spent a nice chunk of the last five years demonising those on disability benefits as ‘scroungers’.

For the latter group, there has been negative coverage too, plus hatred/dislike of various other groups, from the far right to assorted intolerant religious sorts.

Ralph Steadman cartoon

The thing about free speech – the thing that most seems to confuse a lot of well-meaning voices these days – is that the philosophical aspect of the question isn’t about what you agree with, but what you disagree with.

It’s never difficult to think that what you agree with should be allowed.

That’s why it’s important that we have incitement as a crime that can be prosecuted.

But if we say that someone should have legal action taken against them that is the equivalent of a convicted child abuser being denied internet use, on the basis that they accused Zionism of being like Nazism or suggested that Mohammed was a child abuser or ... well, fill in as many entries as you wish ... and thus upset some tender souls: this is naïve and dangerous.

Offence is a subjective matter. If you claim to have been offended by something – to have been abused by something – then who is to say that you’re wrong?

In 2009, the then Fianna Fáil government introduced a new blasphemy law in Ireland.

This legislation defines blasphemy as “publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted,” and with fines of up to €25,000 for conviction.

Former justice minister Dermot Ahern has subsequently defended the law, saying that it was needed because the 1936 Irish constitution only covers Christians.

Well, just scrap that bit of the constitution, then. Why does any religious person need this special, legal protection?

Yet encouraged by the Irish law, various Islamic states – led by Pakistan – have been using it at the UN to both highlight Western hypocrisy and promote universal blasphemy laws, while, as a result, the Irish government has currently reneged on a plan to have a referendum this spring to scrap it.

Blasphemy is a brilliant cover-all for any offence: law based on total subjectivity and a lack of reason.

In January 2012, Indonesian civil servant Alexander Aan posted on an atheist Facebook group that God did not exist.

Further, he asked: “If God exists, why do bad things happen? ... There should only be good things if God is merciful.”

He went on to declare that heaven, hell, angels and devils are “myths” and also posted an article describing Mohammed as “attracted to his daughter-in-law”.

But that counts as blasphemy in Indonesia – and also incitement – and he was reported to the police, attacked by a mob in the street and then charged. In June 2010, Aan was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, with a fine of 100 million rupiah (£6,945.15).

Predictably, that wasn’t enough for some: the Islamic Society Forum, a coalition of Islamic groups, wanted him executed.

Thankfully, Aan was released in January 2014, but the case reveals the sheer bonkersness and subjectivity of the entire issue.

But clearly it’s light years away from what happens in, say, the UK. Or is it?It is really not that long since the likes of Mary Whitehouse and her ilk demanded prosecution of people for offending them. It’s not long since The Life of Brian was the subject of outrage (if not actual riots).

It’s not that long since BBC staff were sent death threats because the corporation screened Jerry Springer: The Opera, which portrayed the family of Jesus as dysfunctional.

The only objective way of dealing with this is to say that nobody has a right not to be offended; that providing there is no incitement to violence, let people say what they want.

I’ve been on the receiving end of all sorts of verbal abuse over the years, including on the internet and for a variety of reasons – but all of which essentially stems from someone being ‘offended’ by something about me and wanting to shut me up with something other than an actual argument.

It can be damned unpleasant, to say the least. No sane person wants to be accused of being an anti-semite or a racist, for instance.

But how naïve is it to expect that all of life should be ‘nice’.

Great if it was – but how would we be able to tell? – but reality is not all chamomile tea and cuddles.

Education has to be central to changing attitudes.

But driving things underground, fueling a sense of victimisation and martyrdom ... what good does that do?

If people want to burn flags or books, ignore them. They’re little different to online trolls demanding attention. So don’t give them the reward.

And unless you really want a situation in which what you say can be reported because it ‘offended’ someone else, then be very – very – careful what you demand be censored in situations where you decide that is the acceptable approach because you disagree with the comments.

Insulting gods – it's 'punching up'

Never mind the politicians: this was the people in Paris

The murders in Paris just over a fortnight ago have already illustrated a number of things – one of which was how the presence of 40 global leaders on the city’s massive march a few days after the killings merely served to highlight a great deal of hypocrisy over freedom of speech from a substantial number of them.

Indeed, the sycophantic sounds heard from many of the same politicians in the wake of the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah – the monarch of a country that routinely beheads people in public and flogs others for the ‘crime’ of expressing non-violent opinion – was, to put it politely, nauseating.

But setting this issue aside for the sake of today’s post, one of the most extraordinary things that has happened in the aftermath of the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has been the attitude among some on the political left in the UK of criticising that publication as racist, Islamophobic and a clear case of ‘white men punching down’.

Now I’m going to assume that the last piece of jargon is understandable to all – although obviously, if you’re white and male, you cannot comment on it. Given that I’m female, I have more points than you and therefore will comment.

Various writers have attempted to correct these assertions, using something as unfashionable as facts.

The facts in question include pointing out that the magazine satirises all religions – and also (on a particularly regular basis) the French far right and its anti-immigrant stance, while also calling an amnesty for all illegal immigrants. On a slightly different tack, the same magazine published articles by economist Bernard Maris (one of the victims) opposing austerity and damning of the way in which Greece has been treated.

But still the shrill little cries about it being racist persist.

It appears that you (well, not if you’re white and male, obviously) must never, ever insult someone’s religion – or at least not if that religion is Islam, which is the religion of choice (or not) for a great many people in the world, of whom many exist in poverty.

But what are the ‘insults’?

The problem is of publishing pictures of ‘the prophet’ – Muhammed – and the problem is twofold.

Nowhere in the Qu’ran is there anything forbidding images of Muhammed or Allah, but these occur in the hadith – a record of sayings and actions of Muhammed and his companions, which was written over the years after his death.

The key idea here is that, since Muhammed was a man and not god, portraying him may lead to worship of Muhammed rather than of Allah.

So at its core, it’s about idolatry, in other words.

Islam is far from being alone in a fear of idolatry. Judaism shares the same fear, up to and including any representations of Yahweh.

In Christianity, the early church was also aniconist, as was the 8th century Byzantine church, while the likes of Calvin and Luther proscribed images in churches after the Protestant Reformation. To varying degrees, this continues today in some sects.

And the bar on images of Muhammed and Allah also extends to Moses and Christ, both of whom are revered as prophets in Islam. This is a large part of why the film Exodus: Gods and Kings has been banned in Morocco and Egypt (apart from the ‘historical inaccuracies’, but let’s not go there).

Aniconism in Islam, though, is nowhere near universal. Sunni Muslims are considerably more likely to believe it than Shias. Shia Islamic tradition is far less strict and there were, for instance, images of the prophet produced in 7th century Persia.

On Islamic representations of the prophet, Omid Safi, a religious studies professor at Duke University, told CNN: “We have had visual depictions of the prophet in the form of miniatures and pictures in the Iranian context, the Turkish context, the central Asian context. The one significant context where depictions of the prophet have not been image-related has been in the Arab context”.

This tallies with the spread of Wahhabism, a particularly austere and fundamentalist version of Islam that arose from the Middle Eastern deserts, which has been actively spread by the likes of Saudi Arabia for years and which provides the theological basis for the likes of Islamic State (IS).

But if idolatry is a fear, how does a cartoon – let alone a satirical one – encourage that? Is someone really likely to worship Muhammed rather than Allah on the basis of any cartoon?

There is no obvious connection – although perversely, the murders have now made the post-massacre Charlie Hebdo cover an icon in its own right, complete with its portrayal of the prophet.

And as Hussein Rashid, a professor of Islamic studies at Hofstra University in New York, told CNN, there’s a “bitter irony” in violent attacks against portrayals of the prophet, since they become, in effect, a “kind of reverse idol-worship, revering – and killing for – the absence of an image”.

So the murders have created one of the things that were feared in the first place.

The second theological response is that picturing the Prophet is a direct insult to Allah.

This is the point at which many will have real difficulty. How do you insult something that doesn’t exist? Or, if such a god does exist, then isn’t he big enough and powerful enough to take issue with any mere mortal who does ‘insult’ him?

Besides, how do you insult a god? And why would a god be so thin-skinned anyway?

Mind, if that’s what the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were doing, I think it counts as the ultimate ‘punching up’.

But there is a further matter of context. Take a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of the prophet about to be beheaded by someone dressed as we’re used to seeing IS insurgents attired. The word bubble has him complaining that he is the prophet.

It’s pretty clear that what’s being suggested here is that the likes of IS are the ones doing damage to Islam – in terms both of reputation and, indeed, in the murder of so very many other Muslims across Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria and so on.

Let’s ignore the nonsense accusations of racism, which start from a position of ignoring the fact that Islam is no more a race than Christianity.

And as for the faux empathy with ‘poor Muslims’ – a particularly patronising bit of Western, liberal guilt – would the same people condemn Charlie Hebdo cartoons satirising the Pope, given that many millions of Catholics live in abject poverty and squalor, even as the current Pope is telling them that no, they still shouldn’t use contraception, but not to ‘breed like rabbits’?

Have they forgotten (if ever they knew) that, while religion might well be the “sigh of an oppressed creature”, it is also “the opium of the people” – in other words, part of the problem.

The people who are now getting upset about the post-murders Charlie Hebdo cover are being whipped up by powerful religious leaders with their own agendas – and those agendas have nothing to do with promoting equality, education, opportunity or pretty much anything else that is in contradiction to their power and to the version of their religion that they use to control people.

Indeed, so successful is that winding up, that people have burned down churches in an entirely different country in protest at a cartoon – a country that hasn’t got enough of it’s own troubles with Islamic terrorists in the shape of Boko Haram, who think nothing of mass murder, mass kidnapping etc.

Priorities, eh?

'Weapons of Choice'

But then again, protests against the post-massacre cover are now also being whipped up in Pakistan, the site of December’s Peshawar school attack, when the Taliban – precisely the sort of fundamentalist goons who get het up about cartoons – massacred 141 people, of whom 132 were children, not because of Western imperialism, but precisely because they want to keep people uneducated.

It’s impossible not to remember Luther’s description of reason as the devil’s whore, as I point out what should by now be bleedin’ obvious: that pissing off shit-stirring clerics and religious leaders, who have power and use it negatively to keep people in an oppressed state, is punching up – not down.

Incidentally, the phrase the “opium of the people” was not new when Marx wrote it in the 1840s. In 1797, in his novel Juliette, Marquis de Sade has his eponymous character tell the king that ignorance is “This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you”.

Sade spent a great deal of his adult life in prison. His repeated ‘crime’? That’s right: offending religious sensibilities – and his relatives were among those who were desperate to get him imprisoned.

And so we return to the question of offence. Who gets to decide what is allowed and what is not?

Freedom of speech must have limits, surely?

Well there’s an old philosophical point that you cannot just get to yell ‘fire!’ in a crowded building for the sake of it. The reasons should be obvious.

Many cartoons are grotesque – see the work of Ralph Steadman or Steve Bell. Should we ban them because of that? Only last year, the Times was forced to grovel an apology for a scathing Steadman cartoon on the state of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

I’d suggest that it was a pity they didn’t have more balls in the face of the ‘offence’ taken by some.

There have been examples of cartoons by Muslims that are downright objectionable in their portrayals of Jewish people. Is this ‘punching up’, on the basis that those drawing them are probably ‘brown’ and those being drawn probably white?

But at what stage do we say that someone’s offense is reason to bar something? If so, who gets to choose?

Unless something is a direct incitement to violence against a particular group – and we have laws for that – then why ban anything?

Should we ban Bell’s portrayals of politicians if their party’s followers feel offended by them? Or only if he is unpleasant about something or someone we like?

Subjectivity should never be a basis for law or for banning anything or restricting free speech. And once we start down that path, there is no logical – or reasonable – reason to not ban anything and, ultimately, everything.

And don’t forget how glorious mockery can be too – for instance, in the wonderful Twitter reaction to Fox News’s uncritical allowing of a so-called extremism ‘expert’ to say that Birmingham was 100% Muslim and a no-go area for any non-Muslim?

Although given the ownership of Fox, that would probably also count as ‘punching up’.

But Twitter has also been on fire when countering factually incorrect and racist content from the likes of the EDL.

However, the EDL is not a sort of group that attracts powerful, middle-class people, but many who feel powerless and economically disenfranchised, and who look for scapegoats to why they’re not doing well. It’s classic kick-the-cat syndrome, and it’s also as old as the hills (hence the tragic rise in anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice).

Does ridiculing EDL then, become ‘punching up’ because they’re racists and Islamophobes (and often sexists and homophobes too) or ‘punching down’ because of their lack (perceived or otherwise) of opportunity in a de-industrialised society that has never replaced all the skilled, manual jobs that formerly paid a decent and dignified wage?

We can – or at least should – be able to condemn the racism and see what feeds that at the same time.

Just as we should be able to empathise with the lives of the millions of Muslims who are living in poverty, in brutal dictatorships or theocracies – many being slaughtered or driven from their homes by Islamic fundamentalists – without pretending that religion is not a tool used by oppressors to maintain oppression, and without adopting an attitude that the ‘problem’ is cartoons that ‘offend’ on the most spurious of grounds.

And we should be very wary of patronising certain groups by suggesting that their religious sensibilities deserve special consideration.

If we go down that route, what would the opinion be about Lillian Ladele, the Islington registrar who objected to the mere idea of performing a civil partnership ceremony for lesbian or gay couple – on the basis that it ‘offended’ her religious sensibilities?

Her employer – Islaington Council – disciplined and threatened to dismiss her. She claimed it was discrimination.

Eventually, some appeals and counter-appeals later, she lost her case on the grounds that, in essence, she wanted to be discriminated for on the basis of her religious sensibilities: she wanted different treatment from her colleagues, because of what she chose to believe.

Indeed, given that Ms Ladele had had a child out of wedlock it could be taken as her being a tad choosy about which bits of theology she chose to consider important and those she chose to ignore (always a problem with all religions).

Which leaves one thinking she might just have been a bigot.

So, were the unions involved and later, the assorted tribunals/courts, wrong?

Should she have been allowed special treatment because of what she chose to believe and how she chose to interpret her religion?

To apply the same stance as that of some on Charlie Hebdo, then she should have been treated differently because, well, you know, she’s black and, you know, many of ‘them’ are religious and obviously we can’t say anything ‘offensive’ about that.

See what I mean about patronising?

To conclude this particular post, some on the left might perhaps benefit from learning what happened to secular opponents of the Shah in Iran after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when their use to the theocrats had ceased.

• Note: no divinities have been insulted in the making of this post. I tweeted and re-tweeted a number of Charlie Hebdo cartoons in the immediate wake of the murders, but using some here as illustrations had the potential to get in the way of the argument.

• A further post is in development looking at the causes of Islamic extremism.

Soyons tous caricaturistes: let us all be cartoonists

Today’s massacre in Paris has sent shockwaves around the world. Eight journalists, a visiting economist, a maintenance worker and two policemen were killed simply for doing their jobs.

For the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, that job was poking fun at whatever they considered needed it.

They sailed closed to the wind of taste on more than one occasion – and on more than one subject – but offending taste is not a crime and never should be.

There had been threats and an arson attack on the magazine previously. And all apparently because some people don’t like you to question their beliefs – particularly not when there’s a big god geezer involved somewhere.

Already, one or two commentators have suggested that the journalists brought it on themselves.

In other words, that they shouldn’t poke fun at certain things. Well, probably not religion in general and certainly not Islam, which has a minority of followers who get very, very offended if they feel that their particular version of a spiritual comfort blanket has been insulted.

Some have suggested that you can critique religious belief and attitudes in a way that is rational and calm and that Charlie Hebdo didn’t do that.

Indeed it didn’t. But that is to forget that satire is a long-standing part of European culture as a whole – possibly even more so in the UK.

And if satire is a valid form of literature/art/debate, then no subject should be exempt from its reach.

A very simple truth remains: no matter how savage a cartoonist is in ink, it’s ink – not blood.

Our thoughts should be with the loved ones of those who were murdered in Paris today, including the two policemen in the street outside the Charlie Hebdo offices, and with those who were critically injured.

To suggest those journalists were to blame is to utterly miss the point: nothing should be sacred.

There should never, ever be a right to not be offended.

Yes, any and all have the right to believe what they wish: but they have no right to force their beliefs on anyone else and they have no right to demand that everyone else adhere to their particular interpretation of whatever cult they happen to link themselves to.

And let us ensure that the terrorists do not win: in other words, let us never be cowed into refusing to moderate our criticisms through fear, because that would mean that the terrorists would have triumphed.

So let us all be cartoonists.


* Edited on 8 January to clarify the positions of those killed.

Why nobody should care if you're offended

If you find this offensive, you're the one with the problem

At the weekend, thousands of people took part in protests after a woman who was breastfeeding in public was photographed by an anonymous individual, who then posted the picture on the internet, labeling her a “tramp”.

Most people have responded in the appropriate manner – also condemning the anonymous coward – although some have suggested she should feed her child in a toilet.

Well, yes – you’d eat your dinner in a public bog too, wouldn’t you?

I detect a common sense deficit.

It’s not clear who took or posted the picture and comment – and in many ways, it’s not the point.

Whoever they are, they’re an anonymous coward – simple as.

It’s not guaranteed that they were male, either.

As the BBC report of Saturday’s protests noted:

Be offended – be very offended

“Cydney Davis, who organised an event in Milton Keynes, said she had also encountered negative comments while breastfeeding.

“I was in a restaurant and I was asked by an elderly lady to use a blanket because it was disturbing her eating,” she said ...

“I asked the lady if she’d like to eat her dinner under a blanket instead. She just walked away and very quickly finished her meal and left the restaurant, but that was her choice.”

Full report

Male or female, these are people who spend their lives looking for something to be offended about.

And it is the perfect illustration of why there should never be any form of law against offence or any idea that anyone has a right not to be offended.

You have a mother who, finding that her infant is hungry while she’s out shopping, discretely finds a place to feed the child.

There is nothing more natural in the world.

Yet someone thinks it’s bad. And on the basis of the quote above, they’re not alone.

‘Oh, get out of my face with your nasty, natural behaviour!’

Presumably they can’t see titties without thinking about sex – either in a prurient or a puritanical manner.

Tramp? (A Poem for Emily Slough) is a perfect riposte to their cretinism.

Offended people burning books and CDs, Pakistan

But we’re on an increasing path toward pandering to anyone and everyone who wants to be offended – not least in terms of religion, where it seems that believing in some form of a god or gods has to be treated as though it were a special gift.

And since any and all gods have proved singularly incapable of showing their own indignation at anyone saying naughty things about them, their followers have to step up to the mark and show their own offense.

In 1989, we had Muslims burning The Satanic Verses (a brilliant novel that I very much doubt any of them had bothered to read) and in 2001, Christians burned Harry Potter books (‘it’s witchcraft, I tells thee!’).

Hands up children – who else burned books that they didn’t like?

Then there are the cartoonists who have been murdered for depicting a particular flavour of supposedly divine being.

In 2004, Sikhs rioted in Birmingham because they objected to Behzti, a play by a Sikh writer. The play was closed.

In 2005, Christians sent death threats to the BBC when Auntie decided to screen Jerry Springer: The Opera, after being stirred up by Rupert Murdoch’s rag the Sun and the equally odious Daily Mail, both of which will condemn others taking offence but whip it up when it suits their own agendas.

How odd that the offended in that case never seem to have objected to the Jerry Springer show itself, and the entire range of similarly vile, 21^st century freak shows that exploit people’s problems for profit.

In 2008, Waterstones in Cardiff cancelled a poetry book launch by Patrick Jones, calling it “prudent” after a campaign by Christian Voice, which also called on the chain to stop selling the book because Jones is critical of religion in general and writes about that.

Offended people burning books, USA

In February this year, there was an outcry at London’s South Bank University when non-religious students advertised the secular society with a poster depicting a Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster version of Michelangel’s iconic Creation of Adam fresco.

Initially, the student union claimed that Adam’s genitals were the problem – too small, perhaps? – before admitting that the posters were removed on the grounds that they caused religious offence.

If god is the creator of everything, you wonder how we ever got a sense of humour.

And only last week, BBC3 caved in when it cut a scheduled question on Islam and homosexuality from a programme that was being filmed at Birmingham Central Mosque.

The chairman of the mosque said it was unhappy about the planned question; the BBC said that the mosque had never raised any issues, but had received threats late on. It subsequently emerged that the same mosque chairman is a senior official in The Islamic Party of Britain, which thinks gays should be executed.

Offended people burning books, Berlin

Whatever actually happened, the decision was effectively censorship – and particularly ironic given that the programme was called Free Speech.

There’s the political-religious variety of offence too: take arch-Zionists, who seek to shout down any criticism of the state of Israel by accusing its critics of anti-semitism. And everyone knows how offensive that is, so people retreat from the subject out of fear of being thus tarnished. Which is, of course, entirely the point.

Mind, on a positive note, one thing managed to create common cause between Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders in Israel in 2006, as they set off in joint squealing at the idea of World Pride being held in the area.

One rabbi in the good ole US of A (which has no shortage of its own intolerant religious bigots) threatened ‘blood on the streets’ over the issue. The parade didn’t take place.

According to news agency Agence France-Presse, one “radical” Jewish group started handing out leaflets around Jerusalem, offering a 20,000-shekel (£2,659) reward to anyone who “kills a sodomist”. The police did nothing.

So, girls and boys: now you know how to stop something that offends you being discussed or taking place. Squeal and threaten, whether it’s with violence or taboo labels. And when in real doubt, offer to pay someone else to murder people or campaign in political parties that want gays executed.

Strange how none of them seem content to rely on their god sorting it all out in the afterlife, isn’t it?

In a further irony: in recent years we’re seen the obscene demonisation of disabled people in this nation of ours – yet those who choose to believe in something for which there is not a single, solitary shred of evidence have to be treated increasingly with kid gloves.

And the issue of offence is not just about those with tender religious souls who need to defend their god.

We also have increasing numbers of situations where people are imprisoned for posting unpleasant messages in social media.

Since when did we start jailing people for saying something that we don’t like?

Yes, some of it can be very nasty indeed, but jailing people for it? Really?

How many times can we now read of police looking into what someone posted on Twitter?

It’s quite simple: the police should only look into something if there is a real and serious physical threat, or if a pattern of behaviour occurs that could constitute bullying and put a vulnerable person at risk.

Bad taste isn’t a crime. Yet.

Thank the gods that don’t exist. 

More widely, should we censor groups that we don’t like?

If someone wants to say that they dislike gays or black people – let them. If they want to say that their invisible friend is a bit cross about something, let them.

As long as someone is not spreading material that is directly intended to incite criminal behaviour, then no – we should not censor them.

And yes – that means that fascists and religious fruitcakes alike have their right to free speech too, because that’s what free speech means, not just allowing those who doesn’t offend you personally to have their voice.

At a time when more and more of the mainstream media is owned and controlled by people who have no interest in promoting serious public discourse but only their own agendas and assorted lies; at a time when we are more spied on than ever; at a time when government is using the law to gag vast swathes of organisations across the land – at such a time, we need to defend any idea of free speech more and more vigilantly.

And giving in to cretins and cowards who go looking for something to be offended by is only the way onto a slippery slope.

After all – who knows how long it then becomes before we cannot, for instance, openly criticise whoever is in No 10 or the police or any other institution?