Shame on the Irish and shame on Islam
Dear readers,
Two stories from today’s papers have left me dismayed and angry.
In Ireland, we have secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defying a strict new blasphemy law which has come into force by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court. The new law, passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000). It 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”. Justice minister Dermot Ahern has said that the law was necessary because while immigration had brought a growing diversity of religious faiths, the 1936 constitution only extended the protection of belief to Christians. But Atheist Ireland, a group that claims to represent the rights of atheists, responded to the new legislation by publishing 25 anti-religious quotations on its website, from figures including Richard Dawkins, Bjork, Frank Zappa and the former Observer editor and ex-Irish minister Conor Cruise O’Brien.
Michael Nugent, Atheist Ireland’s chairperson, said it would challenge the law through the courts if it was charged with blasphemy: “This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level. We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.” He said that despite the published quotations being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, Atheist Ireland “unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them, and we unreservedly support the right of any Irish citizen to make comparable statements about matters held sacred by any religion without fear of being criminalised, and without having to prove to a court that a reasonable person would find any particular value in the statement”.
Then in Denmark, police have shot and wounded a man at the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad sparked a storm of Muslim protest five years ago. Danish media reported last night that Westergaard, 74, was at home near the city of Aarhus with his wife and grandchild when a 27-year-old Somalian man armed with a knife and axe tried to break in. Chief superintendant Morten Jensen, from East Jutland police, said: “At 10pm a personal alarm was received from Mr Westergaard’s house.” Oficers found a man “armed with an axe and a knife in either hand,” he said. “He broke a window of Mr Westergaard’s house. He tried to attack one officer with an axe and he was shot in his right leg and his left arm.” He said the man was not seriously injured and was now in custody.
In 2005 the Jyllands-Posten newspaper published a caricature by Westergaard depicting Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a fuse. Islamic tradition says no image of the prophet should be produced or shown. Danish embassies were attacked including the one in Damascus which was burned down in 2006 and death threats against Westergaard forced him into hiding. In March 2008 Denmark’s three main newspapers reprinted the cartoon after the arrest of three men for plotting to murder the artist. The three – a Dane of Moroccan origin and two Tunisians – were picked up in a dawn raid near Aarhus following a long surveillance operation by the country’s intelligence services, the PET. The Dane was eventually released without charge and one of the two Tunisians was deported. The other was sent to live in an asylum centre north of Copenhagen.
The message from both Ireland and Islam is very simple: if you dare to speak ill against religion, you will be silenced – either by threats or by murder. Personally, I think both of these instances reek of a lack of tolerance and a refusal to accept freedom of speech as a basic pillar of society – which is despicable in Western society. Shame on the Irish and shame on Islam.
Witanagemot Blogs
Fun times!
Wait until Islam criticises Catholicism for its ungodly, kaffir, nature. Or Catholicism gets back to criticising the jews for nailing up the baby Jesus (Benedict clearly has repeal of the 2nd Vatican council in his sights!). Or jews criticise christians or muslims for their heretical practices.
Or, to look more traditionally, when the Catholic church and protestant Church of Ireland start knocking lumps out of eachother’s dogma.
This is going to be a lot of fun.
Dear LFAT.
A Happy and prosperous New Year to you and all who post here.
There is a profound difference between giving offense by force of argument and intentionally antagonising the followers of a belief system for no other reason than incitement. Where the Irish act falls short is in not including long-standing secular belief systems, such as Humanism, Agnosticism and Atheism in it’s provisions and definitions. By this omission the Act fails in it’s intention to protect freedom of belief from intellectual violence and intimidation, though it’ll go down a bomb with the fundamentalist Catholic voters.
Political beliefs are different, and should be under attack at all times by any means possible, otherwise about 1 in 4 of your posts would ensure you were permanently bankrupt. Even so,a rationally argued political blog has more effect than ranting polemic – a lesson which much of the Left blogosphere seems unable to learn.
Agreed. Add my name to that.
@Shaun Pilkington –
Dear Shaun. The Infant Jesus was not put to death – Herod missed him in his pogrom of the new-born. Jesus was 33 years old when he died.
On the other hand, you could see encouragings signs; in both cases, those who would bend others to the yoke of religious intolerance by force are opposed, one by ordinary people standing up to say ‘No, this goes too far’ and the other by armed law officers.
So, on this occasion, I’m a ‘glass half-full’ kind of girl…
I agree with pretty much all of this post, so have nothing to say. Except have a Happy New Year and all that.
@Grumpy Old Man – I know – its a long running joke, however, among the Irish I know, that Jesus is always represented as a baby when they want to illicit maximum sympathy and outrage and so, the joke is that the jews killed baby Jesus.
This could be interesting. Catholics believe Jesus was born of a virgin and was the Son of God. He was divine. The Pope claims infallibility.
Muslims recognise Jesus as a Prophet – but human and inferior to Mohammed.
I wonder which of these two medieval, domatic religions (both with violent histories) will start the ‘fight’ on the grounds of blasphemy.
If I can be ostracised,ridiculed,hated,isolated ,excluded
just because I smoke cigarettes then I have no problem
whatsoever in punishing severely those who defile the beliefs
of their fellow humans. If atheists are content with believing
in nothing,let nothing be the content of their criticsm.
The cowardice of atheism is so manifest when it screams at
Christianity yet mention Islam or Judaism and the silence
is allmost mind gnawing.
Treat all as equal (including tobacco addicts)or keep your
hatreds to yourselves
The Danish situation, while repugnant, is entirely predictable. Islam is not purely a religion, it is undoubtedly now true that there is a far more significant move towards the trend that Islam’s followers view it as a political movement and religion under one banner – warfare is the logical conclusion to unresolvable political conflict between two totally opposite ideological positions. So called ‘Peaceful Islam’ is in retreat, and our western weakness and appeasement is much to blame for it.
The religious aspect, that faith defies proof, gives Islam a profound and dangerous advantage over its enemies. The non Islamic world is mostly secular and must be convinced through reasoned argument and must be cajoled to the battles, both physical and ideological.
As for the Irish situation, Ireland is not a truly secular society as the church still holds sway over many politicians there.
@Shaun Pilkington – Dear Shaun, I stand corrected.
The law is protecting any religion from hate speech and attacks. If homosexuals and everything else can be protected, why can’t religion? Nice how backwards everything is these days and how many people are attacking religion.
Secular atheism, The Cancer of Negativism
The brake on human aspiration,the domain of darkness.
Leninism/Stalinism/Hitlerism/Fascism/Socialism/Atheism
Half a dozen reasons for the re introduction of Burning at the
Stake or Lethal Injection for the squeemish.
A horrible crackdown on free speech and I agree with the sentiments at the beginning of this article, although I think we should be careful not to generalise, as your last sentence does:
“Shame on the Irish and shame on Islam.”
As much as I support the right to express opinion, I don’t think this gives a license to deliberately provoke and antagonise. We should still be considerate of eachother’s religious/non-religious views and debate should always remain sensible.
Still, restrictive legislation is not favourable at all. Mutual respect trumps law every time.
[...] turning out to be a very bad weekend for Islam. Yesterday, we had the shocking news that the Danish cartoonist who drew a picture of the Prophet Muhammed was almost murdered in his own home…, and now Islam4UK – which calls itself a “platform” for extremist movement [...]
I love how the religious in this thread don’t understand that LAWS should protect PEOPLE and not ideas. Gays are PEOPLE and therefore deserve protection. Communism, Catholicism, Islam, Capitalism are all ideas and need to be attacked in order for the fundamental idea of ‘the crucible’ to drive our democracy forward.
But then, I’m going to guess, that the religious feel that their ‘god’ needs mere human laws to protect Him too…
Still, its thanks to largely ignoring those fellas, that our civilisation and technology has improved – remember they tortured and murdered people for the ‘blasphemy’, that the world was round or that it orbited the sun. That’s where this kind of law leads and people like the appropriately name Torquemada above would love that fate for all of us.
Shaun Pilkington wrote,’I love how the religious in this thread don’t understand that LAWS should protect PEOPLE and not ideas.’
Can I assume from your comment, Shaun, that you will join me in condemning the CPS for bringing the Christian couple from Liverpool to court because a Muslim woman claimed they insulted her religion? That you will be writing to your MP to condemn the UK Government for attempting to introduce legislation making it a criminal offence for people to criticize homosexual activity? I also suppose that you will be writing to Oxfam, to criticize their decision to suspend a Christian worker because, in a private conversation, he voiced objections to same sex ‘marriage’? When you say that ‘laws should protect people’, do you mean that they should be protected from physical harm or from being offended?
LFAT,
as I said on Cranmer’s blog, I am in two minds about the blasphemy law as while I accept that people disagree and say I believe in twaddle, what I am against is the slander against the holy people in various scripture – such as stating that Jesus/Muhammed/Krishni are/were homosexual and such things. Maybe if we charged such people with libel, then we could do away with the blasphemy law?
I loathe religious zealots with a passion and would pass a law that required them to be:
1 Pelted with sequins for promoting their fairy tales, and
2 Made to recant their filthy error in the name of Charles Darwin.
In the case of aggravated religiosity (a repeat offence), Christian malefactors would be pushed face down in the nearest font and drowned, muslims would be forced to scamper round and round the Kaaba stoned by atheists until they dropped dead and jews would have their heads battered against the wailing wall until their brains slathered the stonework.
Medieval punishments for medieval minds – seems pretty fitting to me.
If you think this is horrible, think of all the stoning, beheading, torture and other forms of hideousness that they have inflicted on atheists, liberals and believers in individual freedom over many centuries.
Think of Ireland now. Think of Islam now.
And don’t anyone dare bleat that two wrongs don’t make a right or any other such crap. You have to give these nasty, intolerant people some nasty, intolerant punishment because they don’t respect or understand anything else.
To preserve our liberal, individualist societies from harm, we sometimes have to be illiberal to those whose default position is illiberality.