Okay, there’s been a lot of things in the media recently about Muslims — it’s just a bit of a shame that the whole “protester” and “terrorist” aspects seem to have been shoved together by some sources who don’t seem to be able to tell the difference between those who want to raise a perfectly acceptable democratic right to complain about something, and those who feel that it’s perfectly appropriate to inflict violence on people who don’t agree with their opinions.

I’ll just make it explicitly clear at the outset: you don’t have to be Muslim to want to protest; you don’t have to be Muslim to be the sort of jerk who inflicts violence on others who you disagree with. It’s just that the main focus of the news has been of the Islamic side of things, so that’s where I’m going to look at mostly. Please take this paragraph as read throughout the rest of this post, as I have no intention of qualifying every statement with the additional statements like “…and there’s plenty of non-Muslims who disagree with the war”, or “…but you get nutters in every walk of life” or “…it’s only a tiny minority, most are perfectly happy to live and let live”.

Cartoon Violence

Remember that chap who produced the Danish cartoon which depicted the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist? That was a jolly impolite thing, I think most of us were in agreement about. But the reaction to it by some Muslims was not something which should be tolerated even less.

And recently there was the guy who tried to kill the cartoonist, when he was at home with his five year old grand-daughter. This is wrong on so many levels, as it suggests that you are not prepared to countenance any point of view which is different to your own, and the appropriate way to silence that dissent is through murder. I thought we’d all moved on from that, but it seems some haven’t.

But it’s the lack of self-awareness which makes it really stupid. Look at the steps:

1. Person is offended by cartoon describing major figure in their religion as murderous terrorist
2. Person decides most appropriate way to rebut this is by becoming a murderous terrorist, just to show how wrong the cartoonist was

What a fucking idiot. How exactly does that defend Islam against the charge of being murderous?

My God Is Bigger Than Your God

The beliefs of another person ought to be something that we are, generally, tolerant of. Whether someone believes in a God, in multiple Gods, or actively disbelieves in any of ‘em, ought to be something which is their business, not yours. But that is not to say that religions should be exempt from criticism. Particularly religions which react badly when you do criticise them.

I’ve been critical of the Catholic Church, in their attitude towards the use of condoms, which has led to more HIV infections and people dying. I’m critical of religions — and there’s more than one — which are intolerant of homosexuality. And I have a right to voice my opinions, and my beliefs, whether or not they are directly associated with a named religion or not.

When people are critical of the beliefs of others and speak about those beliefs in a critical way, implying someone must be stupid for believing that sort of thing (and/or assuming that because some adherents to a religion think X, that all adherents do), that annoys me. I find that a bit rude and unpleasant to be honest. I tend to feel that irrespective of whether or not that person is right, they are a fairly intolerant human being. attitude intolerant and offensive.

But when someone says that you are not allowed to be critical of beliefs or to speak about them in a critical way, at the risk of being attacked or prosecuted, then that annoys me for precisely the same reason. It’s intolerant and offensive. Plus it makes it seem as though people are worried that the religion won’t stand up to proper scrutiny and frankly, if there is a God, I rather suspect He is big enough to cope with a bit of disbelief. After all, he’ll get his chance to point out the error of their ways in his own manner…

And that’s why, I think this new Irish blasphemy law is a bit shit. If I were to say something in Ireland which you felt outraged or offended your religion, I could be fined €25,000 fine unless I could justify it. Not surprisingly, many people are critical of this (rightly in my opinion) as damaging to freedom of expression.

The Blasphemy Ireland website (set up, I presume, specifically to challenge this), sums it up perfectly:

In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.Blasphemy.ie

And, to point of the stupidity of the whole thing — every religion will have, somewhere, something contained within it that adherents to another may find objectionable — they have a list of quotations from a variety of figures, but three of the main venerated types are represented — Jesus Christ, Muhammad and Richard Dawkins.

Wootton Bassett

And then there’s Anjem Choudary. He suggested that his group — which I’m not going to name because I think they’ve gone about this primarily for the publicity, and I’m not going to contribute to that — should march through Wootton Bassett, where British servicemen killed in action are returned, in protest against the Muslims being killed by British forces in Afghanistan (and/or Iraq? — not sure on this one).

If he’d wanted a peaceful march through the streets of anywhere else, no one would have given a toss. But he picked Wootton Bassett primarily because it would spark in the national consciousness, and infuriate people who felt that dead servicemen who weren’t responsible for the war in the first place and surely who had already sacrificed quite enough thank you very much should be used as pawns for his political ends.

And yet the media helped serve his political ends by this suddenly becoming a national media item; with everyone debating whether or not his potential march (which, so far as I know, he never actually asked permission for in the first place) should be banned — and he’s suddenly seen as the face of Islam in the UK. Do the papers speak to the vast majority of British Muslims to find out their views? Certainly not at first. Not until after they’ve painted Anjem Choudary as the face of Islam in the UK.

The vast majority of atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Pagans and God/Deity Of Choice knows what else are quite capable of doing this. So why do we spend so much of our time pandering to the intolerant?

So how do I feel about this. Should it be banned? Should it be allowed to go ahead? Well, there’s a You Tube video which expresses my thoughts probably better than I can here…

Dan Bull, thank you.