Say anything you like as long as it’s inoffensive
Once again, some people in the UK seem to have a shaky grasp on the concept of free speech.
A Tory MP was investigated by police after he said in Parliament that the niqab and the burqa is the ‘religious equivalent of going around with a paper bag over your head with two holes for the eyes.’ He was questioned over the telephone by officers and a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, but he was later told that no action would be taken.’ That’s nice, but how odd that he was questioned at all. It was the Northamptonshire Rights & Equality Council that thought he needed to be shopped.
Anjona Roy, the REC’s chief executive, said she contacted police by email after her organisation received complaints about the MP’s comments. She also said that the incident had been raised at a meeting of the County Hate Incident Forum, whose members include local authority and police representatives, and it had been agreed that a complaint was appropriate. Ms Roy said she took offence at Mr Hollobone’s likening of the head-to-toe Muslim covering known as a burka to a paper bag. “I think the majority of people would find that quite offensive. If you disagree with people wearing burkas, there are other ways of putting it.”
[through gritted teeth] Yes but ‘quite offensive’ is not a police matter. Mere ‘offensiveness’ is not illegal. The fact that the majority of people would (according to one person) find something ‘quite offensive’ is not enough to make that something a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service. If the only free speech is speech about which no one will say ‘I think the majority of people would find that quite offensive’ then there is no free speech at all. Speech that has to pass the test that no officious head of a so-called Rights & Equality Council will call it offensive is about as far from free as speech can get. ‘Quite offensive’ speech is not against the law except in benighted oppressive stupidity-ridden theocracies and tinpot dictatorships.
When people who don’t get that, but in fact think the very opposite – think that speech that they find ‘quite offensive’ should be reported to the police – are the heads of Rights & Equality Councils, then there’s a problem.
How are we ever going to protect ourselves from respect creep, which, in the end, will enthrone religion where once there was freedom. And if it enthrones religion, it will be the religion that is prepared to go ballistic in the violence stakes that will win. It’s called natural selection.
In my opinion, people should be allowed to wear burqas and niqabs, but by the same token, people can say what they like about them. I think the same about the Ku Klux Klan hood, too. And nudism. Complete freedom of attire is either good for everyone or good for no-one.
Even worse, as Mr Hollobone was speaking in Parliament, his comment is privileged; that is, no legal sanction can be applied to it before or afterwards. If the supposed rights committee, a local government quango, didn’t know that long-established fact, then it should have done.
I can’t agree with you there Emily. I don’t think complete freedom of attire would be workable, at least not at most people’s current state of evolution. Naked high school teachers for example? I think not.
If enough people went nude, it would soon be normalised. Nudity doesn’t represent a repressive ideology, it’s just a body. I would probably find a naked person less disconcerting than a woman in a burqa, or a man in Ku Klux Klan hood, all other things being equal.
I had a feeling I might be going out on a limb with this one!
As a cricket fan I’m offended when people say cricket is boring, etc. If the law is going to protect the feelings of niqab wearers it should protect the feelings of cricket fans as well (and every other group you can think of). Or would that be unworkable?
Bob-B: Cricket is boring.
Feel free to report me to the Police for being offensive! ;)
No naked people! Ew! Summer is bad enough, when you have to see everyone’s unlovely armpits and bellies and thighs and all the rest of it. More clothes please – lots and lots of clothes.
Heehee.
Tom:
People who think cricket is boring are mad.
You could respond by saying:
People who say people who think cricket is boring are mad are stupid.
This would be as sophisticated as most debates about ‘offense’.
“If the only free speech is speech about which no one will say ‘I think the majority of people would find that quite offensive’ then there is no free speech at all.”
Quite – and religions would be silent too. As a gay man (and a secularist, rationalist, not anti-woman… etc etc) I’m routinely offended by religious ravings, and not over some frock I happen to wear, but over the fact that an element of my very being is referred to as ‘intrinsically disordered’, to give a classic (and relatively polite) example. But arguing back is the rational response, not going on about ‘hate’ laws.
‘not going on about ‘hate’ laws’ and certainly not calling the cops! That’s the part I just can’t get over – that ‘this is offensive, call the police’ approach. To a Yank it just seems so ridiculous.
Somebody should do a satirical UK ‘Law and Order: Offensive Comments unit.’
I’m with Emily. Mind you, I’m definitely not as pretty a sight as I was 30 years ago or even 15 years ago, having expanded somewhat around the midsection … so I wouldn’t be inflicting my own naked body on anyone’s eyes in public. You can relax about that one, Ophelia.
Meanwhile, what’s not to like about strolling through a grassy Australian university campus in the summer, when all those pretty young women are lying around on the lawns reading or chatting, wearing almost nothing in many cases, and appearing completely insouciant about it? It sure beats the hell out of Saudi Arabia.
I really thought the CPS would pick this one up so they could say they didn’t have time to deal properly with more trivial issues like why an innocent man was shot multiple times by police in a crowded Tube train…
But I thought that the concept of “offensiveness”, as perceived by anyone who hears the comment, was the foundation of political correctness, and all of its implimentations on, e.g., U.S. college campuses.
What do you mean “but”? What’s that got to do with me? And can we not talk about “political correctness” for christ’s sake?
Have to strongly agree with Emily and Russell on this one. If someone can freely wear a full ninja costume, someone else should be allowed to freely wear nothing. Logically, either the laws regulating attire are intended (a) to protect people from being offended (burqas OK, nudity not OK), or (b) to promulgate personal freedoms so long as the latter don’t interfere with anyone else’s liberty (burquas OK, nudity OK), or (c) to protect security at the expense of modesty (burqas not OK, nudity sometimes obligatory). Personally, I’m OK with option (b), less so with (c), and not at all with (a).
Nudity should be a capital crime!
Hahahaha