Yes or no
A guy on Facebook yesterday posted video of something a lot of my friends have been passionately discussing: a few minutes from the Parliamentary inquiry into Sharia courts on Monday, in which Bradford MP Naz Shah interrupts Maryam Namazie’s testimony to demand a yes or no answer to a misleading question and then simply attacks her for her views. It’s pretty horrifying.
On a totally unrelated note, I wonder if any of the people that are in the habit of asking peremptory yes or no questions (“are trans women women and note that anything other than an immediate yes will be taken to mean no” as an example just off the top of my head) see anything of themselves in that bullshit?
I wondered the same thing, of course, but I don’t know. I have a hard time understanding the mindset that can make a habit of asking peremptory yes or no questions (apart from people who have to for vocational reasons – parents, cops, prosecutors and judges, etc).
And Naz Shah’s question is a perfect example of why such questions are so infuriating and wrongheaded. The answer of course is No but that’s beside the point, for the reasons that Maryam was in the middle of explaining when Shah interrupted her.
It’s like the aggressive lawyers on courtroom shows: “Didn’t you say that you were going to beat Mr. Smith?” Yes, but we were playing tennis— “No further questions!”
[…] how Naz Shah interrupted Maryam to demand a yes or no answer to the question is a finding of a Sharia court legally binding in the […]