Signing letters
Mina Ahadi and Maryam Namazie wrote a letter to the UN.
We are writing to ask that the UN general assembly condemn stoning as a crime against humanity and issue an emergency resolution calling for an end to the medieval and barbaric punishment as well as the immediate release of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and others sentenced to death by stoning.
We also ask that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not be allowed to address the general assembly and that his government be boycotted.
The letter has 40 signers. Is that too many, do you suppose? Would Julian Baggini consider that over the maximum for signing a letter whose content he agrees with?
I am glad that people are protesting on the key issues that the pope has got very wrong. If only a few people were doing so I might have felt it necessary to sign the petition. But when everyone starts piling in, it is perfectly reasonable for others to say it is time to back off before it gets too ugly.
What number adds up to “everyone”? It certainly wasn’t literally everyone in the case of the letter protesting against the pope’s visit, we know that; we know that from the fawning media coverage and the sycophantic government attendance and the groveling of much of the public. So what is the number? 40? 100? It’s hard to know if 40 makes it under the wire as “only a few people” or gets shut out as “everyone piling in.”
The two letters have a good deal in common – both have to do with urging bodies that should recognize universal human rights not to give a platform to a male autocrat who does not recognize universal human rights and who is at the head of a body that systematically violates human rights.
I have a hard time seeing any good reason for refusing to sign either one, much less for arguing against doing so in public.
I hesitate to comment, lest everyone pile on in support of what is said here. But surely this is a point of great importance. Acts of protest are guaged, not by the number of those who engage in them, but by the reasons for making the protest. And just as there are reasons to protest the vile regime of Ahmadinejad, and the primitive and brutal practice of stoning people to death, so there are good reasons to protest the pope, a pope who, immediately upon arriving in Britain, condemned secularism, the one thing that, perhaps above all others, has provided peace in a multi-religious society.
The pope complains of the marginalisation of religion, and yet he fails to do more than cry crocodile tears for the horrors suffered by so many children abused and raped at the hands of catholic priests. Religion should be marginalised in any event, but one with so much guilty harm on its hands, should be marginalised even more. The pope has not done one thing to change the way the church approaches these questions. He has not produced on guilty priest or bishop, and consigned him to the appropriate legal authorities. Instead, he has blamed it on his subordinates, he has blamed it on moral relativism, of all things, and has complained even more loudly about secularism. It beggars the imagination that the powerful in Britain should have greeting this man without one word of reproach.
The church is, from the standpoint of secular society, no more than another interest group, no different essentially than unions or other societies or associations. It has no role to play at the centres of political power, and should never have such a role. But, of course, it does, because catholic politicians are often held to ransom by the church, in order to coerce them to vote in ways approved by the church. This endangers democracy itself and the freedoms that secular governance alone can provide. The proposition that religion should play a central role in the public square, a proposition apparently approved by many of the powerful in British society, who listened unapologetically to the pope’s words, is a danger to secular society, and the peace and equality in provides.
It is not only right, it is a duty, to protest such views, and while the pope may have the right to express them in the Vatican, he should not have the right, as a visiting “head of state” to express them, without objection, in a country of which he is not a citizen. General De Gaulle once visited Quebec, and from his hotel balcony shouted out the words, “Vive le Quebec libre!” He was quickly shown the door, and was on the next fllight back to France. And so should the pope have been hurried on his way, the moment that he insulted the British people and the values for which they have stood for so many years, and the freedoms for which so many Britons have died.
The idea that the numbers of protestors to such outrageous expressions of opionion, by a foreigner on a so-called “state visit”, should determine whether one should, oneself, also protest, is ridiculous. And the suggestion that the pope was merely on a visit to encourage the members of his own church, is belied by the scope of the statements that he made. To have said publicly, on such an occasion, that atheism was responsible for the horrors of Hitler’s Germany, is nothing less than an insult to every non-believing citizen of Great Britain, and it is, to my mind, something of so great offence, that he should have been, in the name of the British people, publicly rebuked for his temerity. That this did not happen, and that the Prime Minister should have bid his “guest” a warm and grovelling farewell, is a measure of how low the religious mind has sunk. This is precisely the kind of appeasement that causes mindless violence. Churches are centres of power, and sources of violence. That the pope was treated as a gentle and peaceful man is at odds with the reality of papal power and the brutality of his opinions. It is a sad day for Britain that it happened in the name of a government that stands (in name) for the conservation and preservation of British values and institutions.
What the claim reminded me of all along was that silly adolescent thing of not liking it when too many other people liking what you like – wanting to be Special, wanting to have better taste than all but a few other Special people. Yeccch.
It’s the
Woody AllenGroucho Marx thing – not wanting to join any club that would have me as a member. A good joke, but this stuff is not a joke. It’s not a joke and above all it’s not about the precious self – it’s not about putting on a display of moral nicety (especially one that makes no sense). The hell with that. Even if you find the whole thing boring, irritating, crowded, whatever – suck it up – it’s not about you, it’s about people who are not immune to the tyranny of church and pope or mullah and Evin.If I wanted in on a piece of this signing action, how would I go about doing it?
Let’s make it “41 STRONG AGAINST STONING”! Or, indeed, maybe even some other numerical value that is perhaps in excess of 40.
Good question, and good idea. I had a chance to sign it because Maryam emailed me. I’ll ask her if/how more people can join the sheep-like herd and sign.
I’m slightly embarrased that I have to correct you Ophelia on such a trivial matter, but Woody Allen is not the source of that famous quote, it is from another genius of comedy – Groucho Marx.
And as you say of course, this thing is not a joke….
Oh der, of course he is – I was thinking of Annie Hall, of course – where he credits Groucho for the line, so I have no excuse. Thank you, Swedish Chef. (Swedish Chef?! You must be a wonderful person!)
By the way, Eric, I answered your comment by doing the next post. In other words yes, there are indeed good reasons to protest the pope, and it needs doing. There are masses of people who do the job of not protesting the pope; it’s good that there are a few who do the other thing.
Yes, thank you, and well said too. And isn’t that a great selection from the speeches?! I am very impressed by them all, but I must say I am particularly impressed Geoffrey Robertson. It takes a lot of guts for someone in his position to stand out there and tell it like it is. The rest have become well known as protesters. Robertson is new at it, and he’s very good at it too. (And he also shows how very small Julian was being by counting himself out because “everyone” was “piling in”.) By saying this I do not wish to detract even the smallest bit from the others.
Correction to the correction
Groucho Marx said that he wouldn’t pay to join a club that accepted him as a member. But he never said that he wouldn’t join the club if it was for free.
Signing a letter – especially if it is a round robin – doesn’t cost anything. It’s when you have to put your head (or hand) on the block that you start considering the likely cost.
Robertson may be new at protesting (I don’t know), but he’s a QC, so he’s probably well used to performative public speech. That could have something to do with why he’s good at the protesting thing. It’s Johann who keeps surprising me.
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