No that’s not what the government should do
Yesterday after the conviction of Tanveer Ahmed who murdered Asad Shah, Bradford Council of Mosques told BBC Newsnight that the Government should reintroduce blasphemy law in the UK as “faith communities have the right not to be offended.”
We at Inspire firmly disagree and would oppose any attempt to bring back any kind of blasphemy law. There is no right not to be offended. There is is however the right to free expression and freedom of religion.
I do wish someone could disabuse religious “communities” of that fatuous idea. They don’t have any “right not to be offended” in the sense they’re using there – the sense that would justify a blasphemy law. There are other senses of “right” and “offended” such that that claim could be reasonable. They could say, for instance, that Muslims have a right not to be attacked or bullied for their religion: we all have a moral right not to be attacked or bullied, other things being equal, and religion doesn’t change that.
But that’s not what the Bradford Council of Mosques is saying. It’s saying religions should have immunity from any kind of criticism and dissent. That, of course, is an outrageous claim, just as Inspire says.
I mean, if they have a right not to be offended for their “sincere beliefs”, why wouldn’t I have a right not to be offended in my “sincere beliefs” – such as the belief that women are people, too?
Even the word “attacked” sounds tricky to me because someone can decry the merest disagreement as an attack, on the basis of their feelings alone. I wish there were words that better evoked the difference between reasonable expression (e.g., dissent, disagreement) and the abusive kind, like verbal assault, harassment, etc.
I like “bullying”; it feels like more of a stretch for the religious to successfully argue that garden-variety blasphemy qualifies as bullying. (But then again, there’s the American & British left’s reaction to Charlie Hebdo, which pretty much did just that…)
iknklast @ 1 – Ah but they’re crafty enough not to phrase it that way. They’re crafty enough to invoke the C-word – Community. That word is for some reason treated as quasi-magic in the UK. If you attach “faith” to it…well, success is all but guaranteed.
*and Canadian — we were shits about Charlie Hebdo, too.
True, about “attacked.” That’s actually why I added “bullied” – as a quick way to clarify how I was using “attacked.” Think of the two words as a unit.
So how does shit like this coexist with the Brexit crowd? The fact that it doesn’t work here is in no small part aided by our own Islamophobes.
Oh well it doesn’t, of course. The two crowds hate each other.
On the other hand I’m pretty sure there are some Christians who buy into that claim and are Brexiters, so there’s that.