The right to be offended
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed has read The Jewel of Medina.
Muslims hold Muhammad, Aisha and other religious figures very close to their hearts, dearer to them than their own parents, and just as much to be respected, protected and defended.
What other religious figures? And how many of them? And in any case how very peculiar to hold long-dead people dearer than one’s parents, and also to consider them to need to be respected, protected and defended. They’re dead – they don’t need to be respected, protected and defended, and furthermore, as ‘religious figures,’ they shouldn’t be respected, protected and defended as a matter of right and duty; they should be closely watched, questioned, doubted, and if necessary disobeyed. This idea that long-dead ‘religious figures’ must be reflexively and unquestioningly respected, protected and defended is typical of the mental prisons that believers build for themselves, especially, it would seem, believers in Islam. That’s a dopy, truculent, defensive, sentimental, taboo-ridden view of the world, and it’s not a healthy view for grownups.
Muslims believe they went through enormous hardship in order to keep the spiritual message of faith intact, and in return wish to honour their contribution. This is to be carried out in a measured and peaceful manner, in keeping with the spirit of Islam that advises returning harsh words with good ones, and malice with mercy.
Really? Is that ‘the spirit of Islam’? If that is the spirit of Islam, can anyone name one Islamist country (one country largely ruled by sharia or by clerics or both) that demonstrates that? Because I can’t. I can’t think of one single country or part of a country (like northern Nigeria) where clerics run things that fits that description. Not one.
Many Muslims will indeed be offended by this book, and they should make clear why they feel hurt. If our society upholds the right to offend, then the right to be offended goes with it. But it is respect and empathy for their feelings that Muslims want, not fear.
Well of course ‘the right to be offended’ goes with the right to offend and with any other right anyone can think of. That’s a truism. The right to be annoyed, the right to be bored, the right to be mildly amused, and countless similar rights, are inviolable. But that of course is not the issue. The issue is the right to be offended and force other people to shut up as a result of that being offended – and that’s a whole different story. But naturally Shelina Zahra Janmohamed didn’t want to put it quite that bluntly – so she put it absurdly, instead.
Short but brilliant.
The ‘spirit of Islam’ back to the beginning has been dodgy claims of privilege, betrayal, massacre, and manufactured grounds for self-righteousness. Just like certain other religions, but without changing as they have.
Janmohamed also argues that we cannot criticize “child brides” because young teenagers in Europe used to get married. It’s like an argument, only not.
She seems to be using a religious(-ly derived) tradition of rhetoric based on assertion rather than argument. It’s an odd fit for the BBC (or should be) and it fares badly when faced with free inquiry.
Why did the BBC choose her?
In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is 13 but is hardly ever described as a “child bride”. Hypocrisy.
‘If that is the spirit of Islam, can anyone name one Islamist country (one country largely ruled by sharia or by clerics or both) that demonstrates that? ‘
And that proves what?
How many countries supposedly with ‘Enlightenment roots’ actually lived up to their ideals? I recall most of them carried on with slavery, colonialism, world warfare and genocide.
The American Constitution was written according to ‘Enlightenment’ principles – and by some of its heroes, but allowed nealy a century of slave-ownership.
Does that prove the ideals of ‘The Enlightenment’ were worthless or that those who still believe in them are deluded?
Resistor, Romeo and Juliet is FICTION. And anyway, both Romeo and Juliet’s parents were AGAINST the romance, and tried to force them out of it. Also, they were roughly around the same age. Most NON-FICTION Islamic child-brides are forced into marriage to men much much older than themselves.
Also, no-one said the Enlightenment created a magical utopia. It was a few momentous steps in the right direction, that’s all. Any steps away from religion, ignorance and cruelty and towards secular humanism / naturalism are good steps in my book.
Shelina at Spirit 21 does mean very well, but her grasp of argument is poor. The last thing I remember she got into her heads was that because Hazel Blears did not think it was a good idea for government ministers to attend conferences run by Islamists (the IslamExpo), that meant Hazel Blears thought Muslims should not become involved in politics. No pointing out the absurdity of that position could sink in – she would just restate what she said. She is a mistress of the non sequitur.
http://www.spirit21.co.uk/2008/07/only-proper-muslim-is-non-political-one.html
Resistor – Romeo and Juliet were fictional teenagers. Let me repeat that so that you can understand it. They were teenagers . How does that compare to a man in his late 40s marrying a six year-old girl and fucking her at 9? Are you really that much of an idiot?
Apologies for my vulgarity. Resistor deserves it and worse, but B&W doesn’t.
“Does that prove the ideals of ‘The Enlightenment’ were worthless or that those who still believe in them are deluded?”
You are confusing an ideal taking time to achieve with an ideal simply not being applied but still being used to beat other people over the head with.
Others have pointed out that you are also confusing fact and fiction, but I’d add that the characters of Romeo & Juliet are similar ages. And well over age six. Or nine.
If you want to mention slavery, the evil British imperialists abolished it before those who resisted them did. So much for your zero-dimensional anti-imperialism. And can you tell me the last country to abolish slavery in law, and when it did so?
On the R&J analogy,
“Too soone marr’d are those so early made”
In Shakespeare’s primary source (Brooke) Juliet is approaching 16. In his play, her father originally objects that she is too young and that 16 is a more appropriate age. He changes his mind and attempts to force a marriage on her only after a bloody escalation of inter-family violence has made the alliance politically urgent. He is not portrayed sympathetically for doing this.
Juliet’s relationship with Romeo is illicit and forbidden rather than being a model for future generations. Although, as has been pointed out, they are near enough in age to be not liable for prosecution under a great many contemporary legal systems.
In Elizabethan England the marriagable age was 14, but this rarely happened as childbearing below the age of 16 was regarded as extremely dangerous. Shakespeare’s own daughters did not marry until well into their twenties. Old Capulet makes a point of Juliet’s youth and unreadiness, but later attempts to force her to marry. It’s a scene intended to shock. The idea that Elizabethans regarded a 12 or 13 year old bride as normal is mistaken.
Shakespeare’s reducing of Juliet’s age – and his deliberate emphasis on her youth – may have been partly to emphasise the innocence of the young lovers in a cynical world of marriage as business, but most certainly does not suggest that a girl of 13 was considered as ready for marriage. Dynasticaly I suppose one could be betrothed to a fetus and married to a new-born, but consumation at nine would have been regarded then with much the same horror as it is now.
Shakespeare himself, of course, married young (at 18, Elizabethans considered between 20 and 30 as the most suitable age to marry for both men and women)and not happily as far as we can tell.
“not happily as far as we can tell.”
Nor, indeed, UNhappily – as far as we can tell.
Well, I suppose shoving off to the big city alone is ONE definition of a happy marriage.
While Tolstoy’s dictum about happy families may not always hold true, I think there is something to be said, at least, for the idea that physical proximity is a requirement…
The Jewel of Medina is also fiction.
It’s a work of historical fiction using real characters. I get very angry when historical novelists/film-makers deliberately distort real-life characters I’ve researched. But because they don’t have all this religious nonsense attached to them, it is simply to be tackled in discussion and reviewing, in dissecting the way that history is used and abused in popular culture. Why should ‘religious sensitivities’ be afforded special protection?
As a mediæval historian:
I’m not so familiar with the early Middle Ages, but by the 12C, marriageable adulthood was 12 for girls, 15 for boys. Marriages could be arranged earlier for dynastic reasons, but could be challenged legally. Henry VII was the son of a 13-year-old, Margaret Beaufort, who was probably unable to have any more children after that (she had later childless marriages). Isabelle of Jerusalem was betrothed and packed off to live with her fiancé’s family at 8, in 1180, and married at 11: the fact that she was a year under-age was used as an excuse to annul it when a better prospective husband surfaced in 1190. The French princess Agnes of France was married off at 12 to the 60-something Emperor Andronikos in 1183, after the murder of her betrothed, Alexios II: this horrified the chronicler Choniates as much because Andronikos had had Alexios killed and usurped the throne, as because of the extreme age-gap, and the physical contrast between them.
It seems to me as fatuous to condemn mediæval characters for conduct that was not judged aberrant at the time, as it is to use mediæval customs as a yardstick for contemporary behaviour. So by all means condemn child-marriage in the present day, and attempts to justify it by mediæval precedent; but, equally, don’t go all “Shock! Horror!” at the fact that mediæval people (across a whole range of cultures) didn’t see the world or behave as we do, and simply write them off because of it.
‘Many Muslims will indeed be offended by this book, and they should make clear why they feel hurt’
‘Hurt’? Poor babies! Yet more evidence of the childishness of ‘faith’.
That’s the usual terminology in India and Bangladesh, apparently – in the uproar over Taslima Nasreen people kept talking about hurting the feelings of Muslims. Very odd it sounds to an outsider, very odd and childish.
@resistor (-and Silverwhistle?)
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The Jewel of Medina is also fiction.
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Indeed.
Silverwhistle seems aggrevated by DELIBERATE distorsions of REAL-LIFE persons (by extension, people for whom thare are reliable historical accounts). Fair enough.
I have the impression that when the historical accounts of mythical figures (e.g. Jesus, Mohammed and Aisha) are scrutinized, the real existence of these as individuals and real persons becomes rather obscure.
(If I recall there are fairly well researched theories about e.g. Jesus as an composite of several persons in late Judaism)
Nevertheless, an eventual (historical) MISinterpretation of said persons seems much more difficult to establish.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Silverwhistle,
‘It seems to me as fatuous to condemn mediæval characters for conduct that was not judged aberrant at the time, as it is to use mediæval customs as a yardstick for contemporary behaviour.’
I agree, but I’m not sure anyone here has done that.
“The Jewel of Medina is also fiction.”
If this is the case then I don’t see what the problem is.
(Wait for the paint to dry, then tiptoe back to the door.)