Anthropologists are reliable sources of you have to understandism. Pnina Werbner does her bit.

There are some lessons (the British) learned from “The Satanic Verses” that I’m afraid others in Europe still need to learn. One of them is the simple lesson that blasphemy is a double-edged sword.

Okay, now it’s time for anthropologists to learn a simple lesson: words like ‘blasphemy’ and ‘haram’ and ‘apostasy’ don’t apply to people who don’t subscribe to the religion in question. It’s a rather disgusting form of coercion to pretend that they do.

But there was no gain on either side in terms of reaching mutual tolerance or understanding. The novel just inflamed peoples’ feelings – Muslims felt they had been disrespected

Yes. I wondered about this a great deal at the time.

Girls do not figure in this “youth uprising”. Stones were thrown in Paris in 1968, too. But the barricades were occupied by men and women, even if the leaders were all men…It is all the more surprising that alongside the justified focus in the French and international press on the issue of racism, the sexism or machismo of these riots has barely been touched on.

Exactly. The riots were discussed as if they were – in however noisy or violent or overenthusiastic a way – representative of Muslim feeling in general. But why assume that? Why not think a little harder and realize that the rioters are all young … Read the rest

The credulity-straining oxymoronism continues. You have freedom of speech but only if you don’t use it; you used it; you’re fired; also, we all hate you.

A student editor at the University of Cardiff found out his mistake when he published one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Somebody really ought to test his urine – what other explanation could there be?

A student union spokeswoman said Tom Wellingham, the editor of the paper, which won newspaper of the year at last year’s Guardian’s Student Media Awards, had been suspended alongside three other journalists. “The editorial team enjoy the normal freedoms and independence associated with the press in the UK, and are expected to exercise those freedoms with responsibility, due care and

There’s also the Vatican’s view of this, of course.

The right of freedom of thought and of expression, as contained in the Declaration of Human Rights, cannot imply the right to offend the religious feelings of believers.

Well – so much for the Declaration of Human Rights then. How fortunate to have a supreme court in the shape of the Vatican.

Somebody ought to hurry up and write that into the Declaration, so that we can all be working from the same page. And at the same time (efficiency is good) somebody ought to add that new right we heard about the other day – from the editor of the Indpendent, it was, not Louise Arbour, as I mistakenly said … Read the rest

David Hadley and Chris Whiley pointed out in comments that my doubts about cartoons as a genre could be considered all wrong. Yes. Maybe I only meant bad single panel cartoons. I’m not sure.

But it was basically a side point anyway; the central point remains. No, the imaginary ‘right’ to protect religious beliefs from perceived insult and mockery does not trump the right to insult and mock religious beliefs. It’s not 1520, nor yet 1640, and people who have the good fortune not to live in theocracies get to act accordingly, let the Pope say what he will.

Munira Mirza says terrific things on the subject.

Censorship in the West bolsters the moral authority of leaders in the Middle