The Vatican is a nasty piece of work. Let’s not ever lose sight of that fact.

A senior member of the Vatican has drawn up a new list of mortal sins…Along with drug use and social injustice he listed genetic manipulation and experiments on humans.

First of all, how does he know? How do they know? How does anyone know? Do they have a private phone line to the deity so that they can get updates on what sins are mortal and what are venial? Who the hell are they to decide which ‘sins’ are relatively minor and which ones deserve eternal torture by way of punishment? But second, what hateful sadistic shits they are, threatening people with eternal torture at all. Don’t forget, Ratzinger told us just a year or so ago (I don’t have time to look it up at the moment) that hell isn’t just some abstract but comfortable thing, it is literal physical torture; he wanted us to be clear about that. And we’re supposed to think of them as Good, because they’re Christian. They’re not Good; they’re evil. The whole idea of hell is evil, and this business of using it to try to coerce people into obeying a church is…simply disgusting, that’s all.

And of course using it to threaten scientists doing research that will help people with horrible medical problems is beneath contempt. The Vatican sucks.

I have a question for you, basically about terminology. Here is a quoted passage, which I have never understood.

Should religious organizations and their members be treated as unequal under the law for certain purposes connected with gender? US constitutional law has standardly granted special latitude to religion, by contrast with other forms of commitment and affiliation. Religious reasons for exemption from military service, or for refusing to work on a particular day, are granted a latitude that is not granted to other forms of conscientious commitment, such as the familial or the artistic or even the ethical. This remains controversial for the way it appears to privilege religion over nonreligion and thus, it might seem, to violate the Establishment Clause…[S]uch privileges given to religion, though highly contestable, can be strongly supported by pointing to the special importance of liberty of conscience as a fundamental right and the consequent need to give religious freedom special protection…

It may be obvious what I don’t understand. If liberty of conscience has special importance, why is that a reason for privileging religion while not privileging other forms of conscientious commitment? They all have to do with liberty of conscience, right? If so, why is liberty of conscience in the concluding sentence taken to refer to religion and not other forms of conscientious commitment? Perhaps I’m wrong and liberty of conscience actually does refer only to religion – but if so, why? Surely ‘conscience’ doesn’t mean ‘religious conscience’ so why would liberty of conscience refer only to religion? Help me out here.

Anthony Appiah notes in The Ethics of Identity p. 86:

Many accomodationists are also concerned that courts often fail to respect religious beliefs – fail to respect what [Stephen] Carter terms the ‘alternative epistemology’ of the church. What we haven’t understood, we’re told, is that religion demands an ‘epistemology of its own’ – that it is ‘really an alien way of knowing the world – alien, at least, in a political and legal culture in which reason supposedly rules.’

There is a note on page 301:

In this spirit, Carter advises that ‘[g]iven its starting point and its methodology, creationism is as rational an explanation as any other.’ It runs into trouble only because its starting point and methodology ‘reflect an essential axiom – literal inerrancy – that is not widely shared. In this sense, the wrongness of creationism becomes a matter of power: yes, it is wrong because proved wrong, but it is proved wrong only in a particular epistemological universe.’

Yes; the right one. And creationism isn’t ‘proved’ wrong – but then Carter is a lawyer, not a biologist or a philosopher, and lawyers do talk about proof.

[A]t the end of the day, Carter suggests, only might makes right: ‘We win because you lose. We have the power and you don’t. On such distinctions, all too often, is the modern notion of truth premised.’

Appiah wryly expresses doubt that fundamentalist will be grateful for Carter’s ‘stout defense of their rationality,’ because it sounds too dang much like that pesky relativism stuff.

One cannot take another person’s view seriously as a competitor for the truth about the one world we all share by allowing that it is proceeding by a different epistemology. For that puts aside the question whether it is a sound epistemology, a good way of getting at the truth.

Yeah. And it isn’t. Starting from literal inerrancy isn’t a good way of getting at the truth. It’s quite a bad way, as a matter of fact.

‘Alternative epistemology’ forsooth. Reformed, alternative, different – new, improved, diverse, multicultural, sympathetic, postcolonialist – give it up. Adjectival epistemology just isn’t the way to go.

From the Lords debate on the abolition of the blasphemy law. The Archbishop of York.

It is more difficult to reach for an understanding that replaces the common law of blasphemy with a law that essentially provides for a protection not exclusively of the Christian faith but of the fabric of society, as the case in December decided.

So the idea here is that the fabric of society needs to be protected from blasphemy or something like blasphemy. So the idea is that blasphemy, or something like blasphemy, is dangerous or destructive to the fabric of society. Why? Because it pisses people off? But lots of things do that; it’s impractical and illiberal to make laws against all of them. Why then? Because the fabric of society in some way depends on the inviolability of religion? But why would that be? It’s not clear, and York doesn’t explain.

It is extraordinary that at a time when religion and religious identity have come to dominate global and domestic concerns, parliamentarians seek to stick their heads in the sand by attempting to relegate considerations of religion and faith from matters of public policy to the private sphere. The mover of the motion in the other place seems to assume that religion no longer matters and as such there is no need for the law of blasphemy in a society which he believes is very secular. I want to ask this: where is the spirit of magnanimity which shaped this nation?

Magnanimity? It’s supposed to be magnanimous to have a law on the books that forbids people to mock religion (but not other treasured ideas)? If that’s magnanimous, what would coercive and narrow and parochial be?

Baroness O’Cathain.

[A]bolishing the blasphemy law does not demonstrate neutrality; rather, it contributes to a wider campaign for the adoption of a secular constitution, which, despite what the most reverend Primate said, would actually be hostile to religion. There is no neutral ground here. Every society has some cherished beliefs that it protects in law.

Really? Every society has some cherished beliefs that it forbids anyone to challenge, including via derision? I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t think it’s true of the society I live in, for instance. That society has plenty of beliefs it protects in other ways, of course – but in law? I don’t think so. The First Amendment makes that kind of law very very tricky to enact or enforce, because it tends to be declared unconstitutional before the ink is dry. And I have to say, I think the Baroness ought to make a comparative study of societies that do protect their cherished beliefs ‘in law’ and those that don’t, and then ponder what she finds out. Either that or go to work for the Vatican, where perhaps she would feel quite cozy.

Let us be clear. The amendment before us proposes to legalise the most intense and abusive attacks on Christ, who is the central figure in our history. As the Bible records, God has exalted Him to the highest place and given Him a name beyond every other name.

Y….eah. And the Odyssey records that Odysseus poked Polyphemus in the eye with a log, too, but that doesn’t make it true. And ‘Christ’ is long dead, so the only kind of ‘attacks’ there can be on him are verbal ones, and those are just part of the commerce of life. If, as the Baroness seems to think, Jesus really is God, is he truly going to give a rat’s ass if some humans call him names? But his fans will, the Baroness may protest. Maybe they will, but is that a reason to have a law against it? The B. would obviously say yes; I would say no.

I will say this though: I didn’t realize until I read this that the Lords call the Commons ‘the other place’ – I find that rather endearing. It’s like The Scottish Play.

And speaking of authoritarianism and bullying, remember the new Iranian penal code? I was having another look at it and I noticed something I hadn’t fully taken in before.

Article 225-5: Parental Apostate is one whose parents (both) had been non-Muslims at the time of conception, and who has become a Muslim after the age of maturity, and later leaves Islam and returns to blasphemy. Article 225-6: If someone has at least one Muslim parent at the time of conception but after the age of maturity, without pretending to be a Muslim, chooses blasphemy is considered a Parental Apostate.

Look closely at 225:6. If you have one Muslim parent at the time of conception, and then when you grow up, without ever actually being a Muslim, calling yourself a Muslim, declaring yourself to be a Muslim, thinking of yourself as a Muslim – you then choose to be not a Muslim – you are considered a Parental Apostate, for which the penalty is death. So two people you don’t know have sex; one of them is a Muslim; you are conceived as a result of that sex act; you’re a Muslim, and you can’t not be a Muslim or we’ll kill you.

You can’t say fairer than that, can you!

It’s heartwarming when authoritarian reactionaries join forces, don’t you think? The Vatican and Al Azhar university got together last week to forbid everyone to make fun of them. They included the usual dutiful and empty (given what always immediately follows – given the inevitable ‘but’) acknowledgement of ‘the value’ of free expression, but

Both sides vehemently denounce the reprinting of the offensive cartoon and the attack on Islam and its prophet. We call for the respect of faiths, religious holy books and religious symbols. Freedom of expression should not become a pretext to insult religions and defaming religious sanctities.

So they pretended for form’s sake to acknowledge ‘the value’ of free expression only in hopes of getting away with immediately rescinding that acknowledgement. In that sense I suppose one could say the open threats and demands for prevention and punishment that come from imams and the OIC and similar are preferable; they at least don’t open with that ridiculously hypocritical acknowledgement of something that they don’t in fact acknowledge in the least. There is something profoundly annoying about seeing people go trundling up and down the place announcing that they recognize the value of free expression when in the very next sentence they announce their hatred of free expression and their strong determination to see it done away with. You can’t recognize the value of free expression in one breath and then vehemently denounce the reprinting of an ‘offensive’ cartoon with the next. That’s just ass-covering, and it convinces no one.

Call for the respect of faiths, religious holy books and religious symbols all you like, guys; you’re not going to get it. You’ll get it from the people who already bend the knee to bossy clerics, of course, but you’ll get precious little of it from anyone else; on the contrary, you’re likely to inspire new and more fervent contempt.

Flemming Rose has some thoughts.

Yesterday the Vatican joined the al-Azhar university in Cairo in condemning the republication of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard’s depiction of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban, but the Catholic state and the supreme institution of Islam in the Sunni world didn’t say a word about the foiled plot to kill Westergaard, who has been in hiding since November last year.

Perhaps they think he deserves it. Bastards.

Kurt Westergaard’s wife Gitte works at a kindergarten; she’s been told to stay away because of security concerns.

Congratulations to the Vatican and Al-Azhar. This kindergarten have really shown them the kind of respect they are craving for. It’s the hells angels’ code of ethics: If you don’t respect me I’ll kill you. Or if you don’t respect me I’ll scare the hell out of anymore who’s in touch with you so that they will cut off any contact with you. And it’s working: due to security concerns the Westergaards were kicked out of the Radisson hotel in Aarhus last week.

And the Vatican joins forces with the rest of the Hell’s Angels. Pretty.

The archbishops tell us, in the concluding sentence of their letter to the communities secretary:

The relationship between Church and State, reaffirmed by the Government last July in The Governance of Britain, will continue to provide a context in which people of all faiths and none can live together in mutual respect in this part of the Realm.

What does that mean? Anything? Is it anything other than an obvious absurdity? What can it mean to say that a relationship between church and state will provide a context in which people of all faiths and none can live together in mutual respect? Why would it do that? What does a relationship between the state and one particular church have to do with providing a context for a whole lot of people who have no interest in that church to live together in mutual respect? What does it have to do with providing a context for a whole lot of people who dislike or hate or fear or are bored by that church to live together in you know what?

What can the archbishops mean? Let’s get real, dudes. The truth is, the ‘relationship’ between an official established Christian church and the state necessarily excludes all non-Anglicans – all atheists, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, non-Anglican Protestants. The relationship is one between the state and one specific group, not one between the state and everyone, so what kind of ‘context’ are they talking about? Are they just pointlessly announcing that if all goes well people can live together despite the existence of this ridiculous and anachronistic relationship? Or are they, more expansively, saying this relationship actually makes living together possible, or helps it along in some way? If it’s the first, it’s just blather; if it’s the second, it’s ludicrous.

So the archbishops have changed their minds about not resisting the repeal of the blasphemy laws? They’ve decided to resist after all? Why? Did they look around themselves and decide that religious types don’t interfere with the government enough and they’d better get busy and start meddling?

Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu say in a letter today that the Government should not lightly change laws that, though their day-to-day importance may be small, “nevertheless carry a significant symbolic charge.”

Why yes, they do, and that’s exactly why they should be not only changed but ground into powder and then torched. The significant symbolic charge they carry is that it is Not Permissible to mock or tease or chaff or rally or quiz or fall down laughing at religion. That’s a bad thing to be symbolized, which is why the laws should be ground into powder and then torched.

It should not be capable of interpretation as a secularising move, or as a general licence to attack or insult religious beliefs and believers.

The Anglican church is supposed to be a relatively liberal body, isn’t it? Well – if that’s liberal, what would reactionary look like?

Well quite – if a museum puts on an exhibition you don’t like the sound of, the thing to do is stroll in and threaten the staff with violence if they don’t take it down again. That’s how I take care of these little annoyances. After all it is up to me to decide, isn’t it? Therefore it’s also up to them – except of course when I get there first.

Whereas the mere spectre of possible attacks was enough to get the Deutsche Oper to put the kibosh on a Mozart opera in 2006, Berlin’s Galerie Nord closed its doors this week after a group of Muslims walked into the gallery and threatened staff with violence.

Thus cultural life is enriched bit by bit.

The gallery is now in negotiations with the Berlin authorities in a bid to get 24-hour police protection, so that the exhibition can be re-opened, hopefully by Tuesday of next week. Egesborg said it was vital the exhibition continue. “If the radical Muslims are successful, then it means a mob can curate an exhibition in a museum,” he said. “It would be dangerous for art in Europe, as it would give a good example of what threats can achieve.” He saw a parallel in the furore over the publication of the Muhammad caricatures in Danish newspapers. “Radical Muslims think they can influence what is printed in the newspapers or shown in galleries,” he said. “That is very dangerous. It is a road that leads to hell.”

The hell of radical Muslims curating all museum exhibitions, editing all media, librarianing all libraries – vetoing all cultural products they don’t like. Let’s not have that; it sounds nasty.

Speaking of Katha Pollitt – she made an interesting comment on the Women’s Studies list yesterday, one which is partly relevant to all this stuff about respect and worry.

Actually I think powerful women make many women quite uncomfortable.
Just look at what women say about Hillary Clinton — she’s
‘ambitious,’ “cold,” “I just don’t like her,’ etc. I’m not saying a
feminist has to vote for Hillary, but the kinds of things so many
women hold against her are quite revealing of their own discomfort
with a woman who steps out of the nice-nice nurturing deferential role.

That comment inspired me to reply, in a way also relevant to all this stuff.

Ain’t it the truth. Which is why some of us feel a kind of duty to be abrasive, brisk, chilly, sarcastic, even at times hostile and aggressive. We have to stake out that territory.

I’m serious about that. I think there aren’t nearly enough women around who step out of the nice-nice nurturing deferential role. Mind you, I would be abrasive and hostile even if there were, even if there were no such discomfort, even if I didn’t feel a kind of duty, because it is My Nature. But the fact remains that I think it is a kind of duty. I’m a longstanding fan of Pollitt’s because she is not nice-nice nurturing deferential, and I wish there were more women like her.

I got an enthusiastic reply and a new fan of B&W via that comment, so there are a few of us chilly sarcastic women out there. We do what we can…

The discussion of my hostile and flippant comment on the Secretary General’s advice to ‘respect all religious beliefs’ last week got diverted into irrelevance right at the beginning with talk of laughing at people who pray before dinner, which had nothing at all to do with the subject under discussion; and it went on the way it began, irrelevance piled on irrelevance. Commenters insisted that the Secretary General didn’t really mean what he had said, he meant something else; I kept replying that I was talking about what he had in fact said, only to get more assertions about what he really meant. Commenters insisted that the only alternative to ‘respect’ was laughing at people, ignoring the vast middle ground between those two possibilities. As an example of some of that middle ground I mentioned Katha Pollitt and suggested that she doesn’t pause to ask herself if every thought might cause some reader to feel disrespected, only to be told (with mystifying confidence) that Katha Pollitt doesn’t want people to feel disrespected. How ‘Serafina’ knows that is a question for the annals of The Journal of Other Minds, but be that as it may, I had a look through Pollitt’s Subject to Debate and found plenty of comments that (note that I say this with energetic approval) could be seen by the hypervigilant as failing to worry about whether or not some readers might feel disrespected.

[C]ommunitarianism offers a particular social ministratum – middleaged white academics with children and fading memories of once having been happier and more liberal – a way to see themselves as political actors without having to do much that is difficult, boring, scary or expensive…What is communitarianism, finally, but Republicanism for Democrats – Reaganism with a human face? It’s the perfect philosophy for our emerging one-party state…[‘Communitarianism No’ The Nation 1994; Subject to Debate pp 15-6]

Mostly, though, chapel made me loathe religion…I know believers too who don’t trouble themselves over the outmoded or bloodthirsty bits of their faith; they just take what they want and leave the rest. Not me. For me, religion is serious business – a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom. My family may have made me a nonbeliever, but it took chapel to make me an atheist. [‘School Prayer? By All Means’ The Nation 1994; Subject to Debate p. 29]

The state-backed religions of Western Europe are pallid affairs compared with our robust industry of Virgin-spotters, tongues-speakers and Mitzvah-mobilers. Where is the English Jimmy Swaggart, the French billboard in whose depicted bowl of spaghetti thousands claim to discern the face of Christ?…[Y]ou could say that when the state underwrites religion the buried links between these two forms of social control stand too clearly revealed for modern, let alone postmodern, people to accept…It’s never too early for the young to take the measure of the forces arrayed against those who would think for themselves…Prayer in the schools will rid us of the bland no-offense ecumenism that is so infuriating to us anticlericals: Oh, so now you say Jews didn’t kill Christ – a little on the late side, isn’t it? [Ibid]

Better a panhandler than the Hare Krishna costumed like Bozo the Clown, who is louder than any panhandler and much more obnoxious, or that beautiful black nun, doomed to spend her rapidly fading youth silently holding her bowl near the Times Square token booth. At least with panhandlers, you know your money isn’t going to build ashrams or convert the heathen. [‘Beggar’s Opera’ The Nation 1994; Subject to Debate p 33]

See what I mean? It’s not what you’d call gentle, or respectful of religious beliefs, or noticeably concerned about the possibility of making believers or Hare Krishnas or nuns or communitarians or fans of Jimmy Swaggart or anyone else feel “disrespected”. And what a good thing it’s not!

So what was all the huffing and puffing about? It wasn’t (we were assured) about the kind of thing Katha Pollitt writes – good heavens no – so what was it about then? If (as we were assured) Pollitt is fine, Pollitt is okay, Pollitt is not the kind of writer we are to understand as the kind who is disrespectful – then there is no disagreement, and all those hymns to respect and not laughing at people praying were a complete waste of time, because we’re all on the same page. I’m defending everyone’s right – moral as well as legal – to write this kind of thing, not the BNP or God Hates Fags kind of thing. So what was everyone else defending? Beats the hell out of me.

More exciting news from Iran.

The Iranian parliament is discussing a new penal code, under which citizens who convert [to] another religion will face execution…Besides apostates, the code also [include?]s the death penalty for a[n]yone who ‘insults the Prophet’.

Ah. Well…perhaps this idea that people should be allowed to leave a religion without having their heads separated from their shoulders is just some old hegemonic notion of western Orientalists, or something.

Dr Nazila Ghanea, lecturer in human rights law at Oxford university and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Religion and Human Rights, said: ‘The laws will give the Iranian government legal grounds to resort to taking the lives of any of its citizens who choose to adopt a religion other than Islam. The code is a gross violation by the Islamic Republic of Iran of its obligations as a party to a number of international human rights instruments, particularly those relating to freedom of religion or belief.’

Oh. Well, maybe Iran has changed its mind since it signed up to those instruments. Can’t people change their minds around here? Not apostates of course! They can’t! But governments that are party to international human rights instruments – they can. It’s their human right.

It’s all carefully spelled out. They can’t say fairer than that, can they.

Article 225-1: Any Muslim who clearly announces that he/she has left Islam and declares blasphemy is an Apostate…Article 225-7: Punishment for an Innate Apostate is death. Article 225-8: Punishment for a Parental Apostate is death, but after the final sentencing for three days he/she would be guided to the right path and encouraged to recant his/her belief and if he/she refused, the death penalty would be carried out…Article 225-11: Whoever claims to be a Prophet is sentenced to death, and any Muslim who invents a heresy in the religion and creates a sect based on that which is contrary to the obligations and necessities of Islam, is considered an apostate.

And don’t you forget it.

Some further thoughts on ‘offensive’ writing and cartoons and such. One issue is whether or not we know in advance that people will be outraged. I claimed, sweepingly, in comments, that we can’t know, and Jerry S prodded me into acknowledging that sometimes we can. Fair point. It’s easy (he demonstrated!) to come up with something we can be quite confident will outrage some people. True; and I also agreed that I don’t like or value mere abuse, and feel no need to make a principled defense of it. But I do value polemic, including polemic that can be considered harsh or mocking and that thus can be considered very likely to outrage at least some people. The further thoughts are about why I value it and think it can be worth the risk of offending some people.

I value it because even though we can know that polemic X will (almost certainly) offend some people, we can’t know how many, and we also can’t know how many people in the group or ‘community’ likely to be offended will be not offended but amused, surprised, startled, even shocked, without being offended. We can’t know how many people might be surprised or shocked into thinking in a new way, a way which would be beneficial to them. People do change their minds, after all; people do learn new things, and move, and adapt, and grow (or shrink). That does happen, and it seems to me that it is lively, sharp, combative writing or cartooning that is likely to spark such change. I don’t think it is inherently bad for people to have their settled ideas challenged; on the contrary, I think it’s good. I think writers like Dawkins wake people up in a way that politer, more mollifying writers don’t. I think a certain amount of bluntness and even scorn (for ideas or beliefs, not for people) wakes people up in a way that respect doesn’t.

In other words, scorn and mockery can be liberating. They can be and they very often are. We can suddenly realize ‘Oh – we can laugh at that!’ That’s a huge relief for some people. For others it’s an outrage. That’s the difficulty. I suppose one reason the prior restraint by respect idea makes me bristle is that it is biased toward the people who will be outraged, at the expense of the people who will be liberated. And that’s where not knowing comes in – we really don’t know how many there will be of either. I think the respect idea tends to push us in the direction of assuming there will be lots of people outraged and hurt, while forgetting the possibility of other people being liberated. Even more insidiously, perhaps, I think it pushes us in the direction of worrying more about the potentially outraged than we do about the potentially liberated. I’m not sure that’s the right way to allot our concern. It’s bad to hurt people, so it is right to take the risk into account – but then if when taking it into account it seems to us that 1) the people who are hurt are hurt for dubious reasons and 2) the potentially liberated need concern just as much as the potentially hurt do, then – you get the drift.

Our Mutual Friend, Book 1 Chapter 11: ‘Podsnappery’.

A certain institution in Mr Podsnap’s mind which he called ‘the young person’ may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it. The question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience of the young person was, that, according to Mr Podsnap, she seemed always liable to burst into blushes when there was no need at all. There appeared to be no line of demarcation between the young person’s excessive innocence, and another person’s guiltiest knowledge. Take Mr Podsnap’s word for it, and the soberest tints of drab, white, lilac, and grey, were all flaming red to this troublesome Bull of a young person.

Remind you of anything?

Nigel Warburton comments on the Secretary General’s advice.

If all those who speak, write, express their views have to respect all religious sensitivities, then what can anyone say? Some religious group is likely to be offended by almost any expression of a view. Does the UN want to stop us watching The Life of Brian, Jerry Springer the Opera, etc? Will atheists have to keep quiet about their beliefs for fear of offending religious sensitivities?

Pub Philosopher does the same.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that freedom of expression should be exercised in a way that respects religious beliefs. But then it wouldn’t be free speech, would it?

The Thinking Man also speaks up.

Why should religion be off limits? On what basis is someone going to say: don’t speak bad about my religion? Does this mean that Mr. Ki-moon accepts and respects, the right of countries where sharia law is the norm, to kill anyone who tries to convert to Christianity? He must! He obviously can’t speak against it, since that would amount to not respecting the religious beliefs of those people.

I haven’t found anyone talking about not being rude to people at the dinner table. Perhaps they don’t think that’s relevant.

Good, because it’s not. It’s a category mistake to think it is. The norms are different; the customs are different. Ban Ki-moon wasn’t talking about the dinner table, he was talking about free expression, which means public discourse: books, journalism, media, debate, political campaigning. If a friend rebukes another friend for being rude, it is nonsensical to reply ‘I have a right to free expression!’ Of course you do, but that’s not the point. By the same token, if someone writes a book, it is nonsensical for a reader to complain that the book is impolite. Readers don’t get to demand that all books (and all newspapers, all magazines, all tv shows, all songs, all cartoons, all everything) be polite to them personally. That’s not what books are for. It is what personal relations are for (broadly speaking); it is not what books are for.

We’ve been arguing over the Secretary General and his advice to temper free expression with ‘respect for all religious beliefs.’ This advice is not new – as the news item said, he ‘reaffirmed his predecessor’s line on cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.’ Let’s revisit some other people in high places who said the same thing back in 2006. There was Jack Straw:

Speaking after talks with the Sudanese foreign minister, Mr Straw said: “There is freedom of speech, we all respect that. But there is not any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory. I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been insulting, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong. There are taboos in every religion…We have to be very careful about showing the proper respect in this situation.”

There’s a leader-writer at the Guardian:

The Guardian believes uncompromisingly in freedom of expression, but not in any duty to gratuitously offend…To directly associate the founder of one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions with terrorist violence – the unmistakable meaning of the most explicit of these cartoons – is wrong, even if the intention was satirical rather than blasphemous.

There’s the Vatican:

“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,” Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.

There’s the student union at the University of Cardiff:

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 judgment,” she said…The students’ union very much regrets any upset caused or disrespect shown by the publication of the controversial cartoon and has taken immediate action by promptly withdrawing all copies of this week’s edition of Gair Rhydd at the earliest moment possible. The students’ union has launched an investigation into how the images came to be published in the paper, which has a potential readership of more than 21,000 students.

There is Franco Frattini:

Europe’s justice commissioner Franco Frattini has confirmed that voluntary rules are to be drawn up after talks with media bosses, journalists and religious leaders. He told the UK’s Telegraph newspaper that there was a “very real problem” in the EU of balancing “two fundamental freedoms, the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion”…Frattini is appealing for the European media to agree to “self-regulate”. “The press will give the Muslim world the message: we are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression, we can and we are ready to self-regulate that right,” he said.

There is State Department spokesman Sean McCormack:

Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images or any other religious belief. But it is important that we also support the rights of individuals to express their freely held views.

And there is, just as we were told, Kofia Annan:

Annan said he defends free speech, but insisted “it has to come with some sense of responsibility and judgment and limits. There are times when you have to challenge taboos,” he said. “But you don’t fool around with other people’s religions and you have to respect what is sacred to other people.”

I collected all these from the February 2006 page of Notes and Comment, where they’re all discussed with some heat. They make a pretty sickening display.

The Secretary-General…

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reaffirmed his predecessor’s line on cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday, saying free speech should respect religious sensitivities. “The Secretary-General strongly believes that freedom of expression should be exercised responsibly and in a way that respects all religious beliefs,” his spokeswoman Marie Okabe told reporters.

That’s asking a great deal too much, even as a ‘should.’ Freedom of expression should be exercised in a way that respects all religious beliefs? If that advice were heeded there wouldn’t be any free expression at all. How can we respect all religious beliefs when we don’t even know what they are? We would miss that slightly mildewed guy in Toadback, Arkansas who believes a can of peaches he bought at the Piggly Wiggly in 1957 is the Messiah. And then of course how can we respect all religious beliefs when they don’t respect each other? How can we respect all religious beliefs when they contradict each other? And then apart from all that, why the fuck should we? Why should our freedom to say things depend on our respect for particular kinds of beliefs without regard to whether they are well founded or not? Why, in fact, should our freedom to say things depend on our respect for beliefs that are by definition not well founded? Why do people keep singling out religion as an entity to which we all owe unconditional respect? When in fact religion is the set of ideas that does the least to earn respect? Is that perhaps why? Religion is the spoiled child of the world, whining and pitching fits and demanding everything in sight because no one has ever summoned up quite enough gumption to tell it to grow up and get its own damn dinner? Other, grown up, low maintenance beliefs are expected to take care of themselves; only religion gets to demand the baby treatment. Well, the hell with that. I don’t respect beliefs more the more unwarranted they are; I don’t believe in affirmative action for beliefs; religion should just wipe its nose and pull up its horrible dirty shorts and go compete with all the other beliefs like an adult.

John Polkinghorne…

[S]cience tends to look at the world and treat it as an ‘it’, as an object; something you can kick around, pull apart and find out what it’s made of – that’s the experimental method, which is science’s great secret weapon. But we also know there is a whole swath of encounters with reality, where we meet it not as an object, as an ‘it’, but as a person. Above all, we encounter God in that way and when we move to that realm, testing has to give way to trusting. If we set traps to see if you are my friend, I’ll destroy the possibility of friendship between us.

Not so fast. Sometimes, when we meet an object as a person, testing does not have to give way to trusting; on the contrary, trusting is the wrong move. I’m sure we can all think of examples without help. Of course we don’t want to set traps for someone who is already a friend, but we don’t make friends with everyone we ever encounter, either. It’s not the case that in every encounter with an object that is not an it but a person, trust is invariably the only right response. And a second point: the analogy is silly, because we don’t ‘encounter God’ the way we encounter other persons. It’s not at all obvious that when we ‘encounter’ something that we consider God (and what is that something, exactly?) then testing has to give way to trusting – especially not on the risible grounds that God won’t be our friend if we test it instead of trusting it. If God is that huffy, God can go find someone else to play with.

In Polkinghorne’s opinion, while it can show how things fit together, science can’t explain where the structure comes from: “Religion offers a broader and deeper understanding.” He asserts that what may normally appear as a happy accident becomes intelligible if it is seen as “reflective of the mind and the will of the creator. It just explains more”.

What does ‘explains’ mean there? ‘Explains more’ in what sense? It doesn’t explain, for instance, the mind and will of the creator, or the creator. So in what sense does religion offer a broader and deeper understanding? I’m guessing that Polkinghorne means in the sense that he finds it more congenial and comforting, more emotionally satisfying. I say that because it isn’t really intellectually satisfying (because of the infinite regress), yet believers always claim that religion ‘explains better.’ ‘Better’ must mean something like in a more friendly or anthropocentric or familiar way.

The archbishop lets us know he gets it.

Addressing an audience of more than 1,200 people, he condemned the way Islamic law discriminated against women in some Muslim countries. “In some of the ways it has been codified and practised across the world, it has been appalling. In some of the ways it has been applied to women in places like Saudi Arabia, it is grim.”

Yes. So why put in a good word for it in the first place?

Despite acknowledging the concerns raised over some aspects of sharia law, he repeated his assertion that it was “rooted in the sense of doing God’s will in the ordinary things of life”.

Ah; that’s why. Because something that is rooted in the sense of doing God’s will in the ordinary things of life must be good way down deep inside where we can’t quite get at it but how nice to know it’s there. Of course, if this God person is actually a sadistic shit, maybe the archbishop is wrong about that, but never mind. It will all come out all right in the end.

People never seem to notice the joke in this.

Wikipedia…is refusing to remove medieval artistic depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, despite being flooded with complaints from Muslims demanding the images be deleted. More than 180,000 worldwide have joined an online protest claiming the images, shown on European-language pages and taken from Persian and Ottoman miniatures dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, are offensive to Islam…On two of the images, Muhammad’s face is veiled, a practice followed in Islamic art since the 16th century. But on two others, one from 1315, which is the earliest surviving depiction of the prophet, and the other from the 15th century, his face is shown.

No it isn’t. Of course it isn’t. A face is shown. That’s all. It’s just a generic face. (See?) It could hardly be any more generic. It’s just a kind of symbol of A Face. What makes it Muhammad’s face? Nothing. The caption under the picture, that says ‘depicting Muhammad preaching the Qur’ān in Mecca.’ That’s not much to go on. It could be a volley ball with eyes and a mouth drawn on it, that’s just labeled ‘Muhammad.’ Yet apparently 180,000 people take its genuine faceness seriously enough to fret about its presence on Wikipedia. They should find a more interesting hobby, if you ask me.