Post by mouse on Jan 25, 2015 8:32:53 GMT -5
blogs.spectator.co.uk/douglas-murray/2015/01/i-dont-want-to-live-under-cislamic-blasphemy-law-that-doesnt-make-me-racist/
oh my word..yet another writer not in thrall to the peaceful ones..."""Muslim Public Affairs Committee"""perhaps the light is being switched on.....one can only hope
have spent most of the last fortnight debating Islam and blasphemy and wanted to take the opportunity to put down a few unwritten thoughts.
In the immediate aftermath of the Paris atrocities most of the people who thought the journalists and cartoonists in some sense ‘had it coming to them’ kept their heads down. I encountered a few who did not, including Asghar Bukhari from the MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Committee). In the aftermath of the atrocity Asghar was immediately eager to smear the cartoonists and editors of Charlie Hebdo as racists. From what he and others of his ilk have been sending around since, they appear to have dug down into a narrative which now goes something like this: ‘The murders had nothing to do with Islam, Muslims or Islamic blasphemy law. They certainly had something to do with Western foreign policy or domestic Islamophobia. But by the way Charlie Hebdo is a racist magazine.’
For the first time, MPAC proved to be ahead of the curve. Because by the end of the first week after the atrocity more ‘mainstream’ and ‘moderate’ voices joined in with this narrative. In the UK they included Mehdi Hasan (happily now off to the free media that is Al Jazeera) and the convert to Islam Myriam Francois-Cerrah. Myriam even treated us to a piece about ‘My kind of satire’, as though she is widely recognised as a satirist, or indeed a critic. But what followed was a core part of the wider grievance-mongering: ‘My kind of satire is the type that punches up,’ Myriam wrote, ‘the type that holds the powerful to account and mocks authority.’ Will Self was also responsible for the projection of this particular inanity. And by this particular standard (ignoring Charlie Hebdo’s attacks on all presidents, popes and politicians) the magazine’s portrayal of Mohammed constituted a clear criticism of Islam, which is uniquely bad because Islam is followed by Muslims and Muslims constitute a cowering and beleaguered minority.
To believe this you would have to put aside, among other things, the 56 countries around the world which form the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. And you would also have to forget that only a few years ago when an obscure American citizen posted an excerpt from a budget film about Mohammed on YouTube, President Obama – no less – declared that ‘The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.’
But let us take a strain from this strained idea and pretend that Muslims constitute a tiny put-upon sect in France and Western Europe, and that for this reason anything which transgresses Islamic blasphemy laws must be recognised as the big guys (cartoonists) beating up the little guys (tens of millions of Muslims). If it is the minority component that is the issue then let us transfer this to a country where Islam does not constitute a minority. Saudi Arabia, say. Or Iran. Or Pakistan. What if a free-thinker were to publish a cartoon of Mohammed there? Would that be Myriam’s and Mehdi’s kind of satire? I cannot help thinking that they and all the other ‘context of these cartoons’ complainers would feel no happier about a drawing of Mohammed done in Mecca, Tehran or Islamabad than one drawn in Copenhagen or Paris. In the same way I can see them being little happier about free Western non-Muslims ‘insulting’ Mohammed if they also did this alongside making more jokes about the Holocaust
oh my word..yet another writer not in thrall to the peaceful ones..."""Muslim Public Affairs Committee"""perhaps the light is being switched on.....one can only hope
have spent most of the last fortnight debating Islam and blasphemy and wanted to take the opportunity to put down a few unwritten thoughts.
In the immediate aftermath of the Paris atrocities most of the people who thought the journalists and cartoonists in some sense ‘had it coming to them’ kept their heads down. I encountered a few who did not, including Asghar Bukhari from the MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Committee). In the aftermath of the atrocity Asghar was immediately eager to smear the cartoonists and editors of Charlie Hebdo as racists. From what he and others of his ilk have been sending around since, they appear to have dug down into a narrative which now goes something like this: ‘The murders had nothing to do with Islam, Muslims or Islamic blasphemy law. They certainly had something to do with Western foreign policy or domestic Islamophobia. But by the way Charlie Hebdo is a racist magazine.’
For the first time, MPAC proved to be ahead of the curve. Because by the end of the first week after the atrocity more ‘mainstream’ and ‘moderate’ voices joined in with this narrative. In the UK they included Mehdi Hasan (happily now off to the free media that is Al Jazeera) and the convert to Islam Myriam Francois-Cerrah. Myriam even treated us to a piece about ‘My kind of satire’, as though she is widely recognised as a satirist, or indeed a critic. But what followed was a core part of the wider grievance-mongering: ‘My kind of satire is the type that punches up,’ Myriam wrote, ‘the type that holds the powerful to account and mocks authority.’ Will Self was also responsible for the projection of this particular inanity. And by this particular standard (ignoring Charlie Hebdo’s attacks on all presidents, popes and politicians) the magazine’s portrayal of Mohammed constituted a clear criticism of Islam, which is uniquely bad because Islam is followed by Muslims and Muslims constitute a cowering and beleaguered minority.
To believe this you would have to put aside, among other things, the 56 countries around the world which form the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. And you would also have to forget that only a few years ago when an obscure American citizen posted an excerpt from a budget film about Mohammed on YouTube, President Obama – no less – declared that ‘The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.’
But let us take a strain from this strained idea and pretend that Muslims constitute a tiny put-upon sect in France and Western Europe, and that for this reason anything which transgresses Islamic blasphemy laws must be recognised as the big guys (cartoonists) beating up the little guys (tens of millions of Muslims). If it is the minority component that is the issue then let us transfer this to a country where Islam does not constitute a minority. Saudi Arabia, say. Or Iran. Or Pakistan. What if a free-thinker were to publish a cartoon of Mohammed there? Would that be Myriam’s and Mehdi’s kind of satire? I cannot help thinking that they and all the other ‘context of these cartoons’ complainers would feel no happier about a drawing of Mohammed done in Mecca, Tehran or Islamabad than one drawn in Copenhagen or Paris. In the same way I can see them being little happier about free Western non-Muslims ‘insulting’ Mohammed if they also did this alongside making more jokes about the Holocaust