Stop Her!
Here we go again. The community. Offend. You can’t. Protest. Warn. Prevent. You mustn’t, you can’t, you shan’t, we’ll stop you, shut up, don’t write, don’t talk, don’t say, shut up, The Community.
But to many of the residents on Brick Lane…the novel offers such a negative portrayal of the community that they have mobilised protest groups against a film being made…[R]esidents and traders gathered to prevent filming after hearing that a crew were to begin their work along the Brick Lane area. Some residents have warned of blockades to stop the film from being made…”Yes, you create a work of fiction, but you do not create fiction which offends a whole community.”
Authoritarianism and do-what-I-tell-youism raises its nasty scaly pustulant head again, brandishing its usual coercive banner of The Community to put a sanctimonious gloss on the revolting thing. And – gee, what a coincidence – yet again the author being told what to do is a woman. Fancy that. What do you know. ‘Behzti’ ‘offended’ a ‘whole community’ and got slapped around and shut down and now it’s time to do the same to ‘Brick Lane’. It’s doubly if not triply or quadruply offensive when a woman ‘offends’ ‘The Community.’ Why isn’t she locked up somewhere instead of running around in the world writing books or plays and getting them published and offending The Community? It’s an outrage. Up go the blockades.
Oog. That sounds exactly like a threat. That’s just what that Nigerian bishop (I think it was) said about – um – I forget what, some insult to Xianity – something like “I warn you that others are not as peaceful as we are”.
Thanks for the link.
Found it. (No, it didn’t take half an hour, I did other things first.) It was a Nigerian bish: Peter Akinola. It was triggered by the cartoon fuss – that’s what I thought, and wrote in the previous comment, and then was baffled – a bishop making a threat about the Motoons? I must be misremembering – so I erased it. But it was: the Motoons triggered violence against Christians, and Akinola (understandably not happy about the violence) made a veiled threat, very similar to that of Abdus Salique.
“May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation. Nigeria belongs to all of us – Christians, Muslims and members of other faiths. No amount of intimidation can Change this time-honoured arrangement in this nation. C.A.N. may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue.”
That Guardian article has some amazing stuff in it.