Tell them we’re overflowing with respect
Joan Smith nails the problem.
In the past, Catholics and Protestants took turns to slaughter each other as Sunni and Shia are doing now, but Christianity has to a large extent been secularised…At the heart of this process is an alteration in the status of religious texts…The idea that a single book written centuries ago has unique authority – in effect, a veto over all other ideas – makes no sense in societies where intellectual curiosity is valued and encouraged. Yesterday Inayat Bunglawala, assistant general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, criticised the arrest of Ms Gibbons in Sudan and described it as a “quite horrible misunderstanding”. But during a public debate in London two weeks ago, he refused my invitation to condemn unequivocally the practice of stoning women to death for adultery. It had happened during the lifetime of the Prophet, he said, “so you are asking me to condemn my Prophet”.
If that’s what it takes, certainly. If ‘your Prophet’ commands or condones stoning women to death for adultery (or anything else for that matter) then yes.
Bunglawala is not the guy to turn to for reasonable views.
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, also said it appeared to have been a “quite horrible misunderstanding” and Ms Gibbons should never have been arrested. There was no apparent intention to offend Islamic sensibilities or defame the honour and name of the Prophet Muhammad, he said.
What if there had been? If there had been, should she then have been arrested? Should ‘defaming the honour and name of the Prophet Muhammad’ or ‘offending Islamic sensibilities’ be a criminal offense under the law? It’s good that Bunglawala said Gibbons shouldn’t have been arrested, but his reason for saying so is not so good, and the fact that the BBC is still automatically phoning the MCB for the obligatory comment is also not good. The BBC still needs to expand its Rolodex.
Notice that the government still feels obliged (understandably under the circumstances) to keep saying with nervous urgency that it respects respects respects.
After the meeting with Ambassador Omer Siddig, Mr Miliband said he emphasised Britain’s respect of Islam and the “close relations” between the two countries. “The Sudanese Ambassador undertook to ensure our concerns were relayed to Khartoum at the highest level. He also said he would reflect back to Khartoum the real respect for the Islamic religion in this country.”
Uh huh. That’s not respect, it’s fear.
I saw Inayat on Newsnight, with the Sudanese ambassador. He started out by saying that the whole affair was an embarrassment to moslems and was obviously without merit. He made a clear, well reasoned case. He ended up staring at the smiling ambassador in slack-jawed disbelief as he saw that nothing he had said had made any impact at all.
Just watched a man realise his own irrelevance. Not that it will last.
Bingo – the embarrassment thing. Like the cartoons, Rushdie, all the rest of it. Why doesn’t that stick in more craws? Hey! You’re embarrassing us!
Re: Stoning (of innocent women and children).
“It had happened during the lifetime of the Prophet,”
However, the Prophet’s lifetime was over fourteen hundred years ago, we are now living in the twenty first century.
If “The Qur’an teaches you that the saving of one life is as if you’ve saved all of humanity. Therefore, Stoning of innocent victims is not in accordance with Mohammed’s teachings so consequently something should (by those who are allowing it to continue) immediately happen to stop the perpetrators in their tracks of this heinous practice. Stoning, (wherever it occurs) of Women and children should by the governments be instantaneously outlawed.
The trouble with that is that the stoning of women (or anyone else) should be outlawed everywhere whether stoning of innocent victims is in accordance with Mohammed’s teachings or not. If it is in fact in accordance with Mohammed’s teachings that women should be stoned then Mohammed’s teachings on that point (as well as many others) must be ignored.
Not that it will last.
No Don, it did not last. This was Bungles’ answer (yesterday on his CiF blog)to the question Ophelia asks and many more media commentators SHOULD ask.
“angryeuropean: ‘dear followers of the Prophet, assume for a moment that it was indeed her intent to insult Islam, does she, or anyone for that matter, deserve the punishment of 40 lashes?” (At the time I wrote it flogging was still very much on the table.) Or perhaps, 15 days in prison is sufficient punishment for a blasphemer?’
IB: I personally just prefer to ignore the Islamophobes – there are plenty of them here on Cif and I have learned not to feed the trolls. However, Muslim majority countries have their own laws and customs. If you set out to deliberately insult the Prophet Muhammad in a country where such behaviour is regarded as unacceptable and against the law then I would have little sympathy for you. Gillian’s case is completely different. It was a trivial incident and there was clearly no malicious intent involved whatsoever and the Sudanese authorities have completely mishandled this case from beginning to end.”
He just cannot bring himself to disawow corporal punishment for blasphemy or any actual aspect of sharia.
Oh godalmighty. Thanks for that mirax.
And this is the man the dang BBC turns to as if he were an oracle! Arrgh!