And then there’s Faisal Bodi.

Nobody likes a turncoat. Whether it’s a scab crossing a picket line, or a footballer joining his club’s arch rivals, the consequences of defection will usually haunt them for life. It’s a cross that Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert to Christianity, is currently having to bear. Charged with apostasy for abandoning Islam, a crime that carries the death penalty in Afghanistan, he was handed a reprieve at the weekend while judges examine the validity of the case against him.

That’s an interesting way to put it – ‘nobody likes a turncoat.’ That is in fact a very tendentious way of putting it. It’s also not true even in Bodi’s terms, since at least some … Read the rest

Time to talk about people saying silly things. I know, I know – what an odd activity. What a futile way to spend time. What a bizarre allocation of these golden hours of early 21st century calm and prosperity. I know. One might as well try to give names to all the leaves on the trees (that’s Evelyn, that one’s Marcia, that’s Eric, that’s Deirdre). One might as well try to cook a meal by breathing on it. One might as well dust the living room when it will only get dusty again. I know. But – I can’t explain it somehow, but it seems to call to me – this peculiar avocation of holding public sages up to ridicule … Read the rest

I’m reading Anthony Appiah’s Ethics of Identity. It’s a terrific book. And it keeps startling me by talking about things I’ve been thinking about for years – sometimes down to the smallest detail – such as a particular comment by Martha Nussbaum.

I’ll quote you a bit. Page 40.

The controversy over how to formulate autonomy…immediately lets on to another: whether autonomy…is or ought to be a value in the first place, at least outside the liberal democracies of the West. An availability of options, an endowment with minimal rationality, an absence of coercion: if this is the core of personal autonomy, what could be more anodyne and unexceptionable? And yet…many political theorists write about it as if it

There is one complication about this free expression march, at least to my mind. I suppose that’s why I didn’t flag it up beforehand as much as I could have. I flagged it up some, but not as much as I could have. That’s because it wasn’t specific enough – and that I suppose relates to why I wish Peter hadn’t caved in on the cartoon issue. I didn’t particularly want to cheer on a march for free expression in general, I wanted to cheer on a march for free expression as opposed to religious censorship, or as opposed to toonophobia, or instead of bullying by offended taboo-wielders, or as the alternative to charges of blasphemy and apostasy and … Read the rest

Maryam tells us more about what happened to Reza Moradi at the free speech demonstration. The Washington Post, as I mentioned, reported that he was questioned by the police.

“It’s my freedom, everyone’s freedom, to expose these pictures and encourage everyone to do the same,” said Reza Moradi, 29, a protester who identified himself as an Iranian who has lived in Britain for eight years. Moradi was later questioned by police after someone lodged a complaint regarding the “nature of his placard,” which featured a copy of the Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, a London police spokeswoman said. After a brief, heated exchange with officers, Moradi left the protest on his own

There’s a lot of ‘How’s That Again?’ at the moment. There is the half-laughable half-weepable mess of the ‘March for Free Expression’ ha ha for instance. The ‘March for Free Expression’ which had to be renamed at the last minute the ‘March for Free Expression Only as Long as the Free Expression in Question Doesn’t Irritate Anyone Too Much’ – which, you have to admit, is a pretty lame halting stumbling weak-kneed shambling unimpressive unstirring sort of march. More like a ‘Keep on Lying Down for Thoroughly Hedged “Free” Expression’ than a march for anything. You might as well march against a war and have on all the banners ‘Unless You Really Really Want to Of Course’. You might as … Read the rest

Time for yet another installment of that long-running series, ‘How’s That Again?’ or What the Oxymoron Said. Sit down, stop whispering, fold your hands, don’t kick the seat.

The scene this time is Afghanistan, where a judge is explaining things to BBC reporter Sanjoy Majumder.

Under the interpretation of Islamic Sharia law on which Afghanistan’s constitution is based, Mr Rahman faces the death penalty unless he reconverts to Islam. “The Prophet Muhammad has said several times that those who convert from Islam should be killed if they refuse to come back,” says Ansarullah Mawlafizada, the trial judge. “Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance, kindness and integrity. That is why we have told him if he regrets what he did,