Well, we knew it wasn’t just the Abra­hamic reli­gions, and here’s a case in point. Abori­ginal lead­ers in Aus­tralia have called for a book to be scrapped because it teaches girls to play a musical instru­ment.

Depress­ingly Harper Collins have apo­lo­gised, when what they should have said was “um… it’s the 21^st cen­tury; you don’t get to be both respec­ted and a sex­ist any more.”

I know people tend to think “they’re an ancient cul­ture, we have no right to judge their val­ues,” but I call bull­shit. In this case their val­ues are sex­ist and they’re wrong, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say as much. Sex­ism isn’t sud­denly OK once a cul­ture has been doing it for a cer­tain length of time, and their own inab­il­ity to move on shouldn’t give them a free pass to try to impose their back­wards ideas on others.

Thank­fully it looks like Harper Collins have no inten­tion of pulling the book, and the big­ots are going to have to learn to live with it.

This made me chuckle.

I par­tic­u­larly liked the line

Crit­ics have dis­missed the gath­er­ing as a pro­pa­ganda gim­mick by the Saudis who, they say, are not best placed to host a meet­ing on reli­gious tolerance.

Which might just be the under­state­ment of the week.

Wow. Just… wow.

I don’t know where to begin.

A few days ago, a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Cent­ral Flor­ida atten­ded mass at his Church. Dur­ing com­mu­nion, when the wafer was placed into his mouth, instead of eat­ing it, he took it and walked out. Cath­ol­ics went nuts; even after he gave it back, the Cath­olic League (more on them in a moment,) said

We don’t know 100% what Mr. Cooks motiv­a­tion was. How­ever, if any­thing were to qual­ify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.

We just expect the Uni­ver­sity to take this ser­i­ously. To send a mes­sage to not just Mr. Cook but the whole com­munity that this kind of really com­plete sac­ri­lege will not be tolerated.

Over­re­act­ing much? Actu­ally, that kind of sac­ri­lege will be tol­er­ated, espe­cially in Amer­ica, where free­dom of reli­gion (and from reli­gious per­se­cu­tion) is guar­an­teed by the con­sti­tu­tion. Of course, the fan­at­ics don’t quite see it that way, and the poor kid has been get­ting death threats. Because that’s what turn­ing the other cheek means in America.

Oh, and just so we’re clear: steal­ing a cracker is a hate crime, but send­ing death threats? Oh, that’s per­fectly accept­able, rational beha­viour. If you don’t like the per­son. And if he’s stolen your magic lunch.

Enter PZ Myers, who, as usual, wrote about it the way it is, in a piece entitled It’s a Frackin’ Cracker. As usual, he pulled no punches in describ­ing the mob as what they are: well… a mob. He also offered to desec­rate a com­mu­nion wafer, if any­one would send him one. Cue a rapid switch of tar­get on the part of the Cath­olic League; they’re now engaged in a full-​​on offens­ive on PZ. Not for any­thing he’s done, but for some­thing he said he’d do. To a cracker. Appar­ently con­spir­acy to wound a bis­cuit is a car­dinal sin if you’re an insane Cath­olic — and Bill Dono­hue, the leader of the Cath­olic League, cer­tainly counts.

So — to get to the point — the Cath­olic League are try­ing to stir up a good ol’ fash­ioned witch hunt, and are inund­at­ing PZ with hate mail and death threats, and his employer with demands that he be fired. This is, to be frank, unac­cept­able. All PZ has done is exer­cise his right to free­dom of expres­sion, and he’s being tar­geted by a hate cam­paign. So what to do? Start up a sup­port cam­paign, that’s what.

PZ is ask­ing that people write a short note of sup­port to Pres­id­ent Robert Bru­ininks of his Uni­ver­sity — the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota, Mor­ris — and I second his request. PZ is one of the more out­spoken voices of reason on the inter­net, and it would be a shame if he were made to suf­fer unduly for some­thing as simple as express­ing his opin­ion. If you’re a rational per­son, even if you’re reli­gious, and don’t agree with PZ, please con­sider writ­ing a note in sup­port of his right to express him­self without fear of being victimised.

I already have. Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Sir,

I’d like to take this chance to add a note to the prob­ably hun­dreds you’ve already received in sup­port of PZ. He’s a great writer, a great edu­cator, and a credit to your institution.

It’s true that he’s out­spoken, and that he pulls no punches in express­ing his opin­ions. That is not a crime, and if Bill Dono­hue and his sup­port­ers restrained them­selves to respond­ing in kind then there would be no prob­lem. The fact that they have not, that they have resor­ted to a cam­paign of mass har­ass­ment, of death threats, and try­ing to cost PZ his job — in short, a cam­paign of ter­ror­ism — merely under­lines why it is so import­ant that we have people like PZ who are unafraid to call these people out on their hypo­crisy, and to cri­ti­cise their unac­cept­able beha­viour in public.

I hope that the inco­her­ent scream­ing of the mob will not pre­ju­dice you against PZ in any way, and that he will be allowed to con­tinue to bring credit to your insti­tu­tion amongst free-​​thinkers and ration­al­ists across the globe.

Sin­cerely,

Will Gor­ing,
Read­ing,
United Kingdom.

Appar­ently, in Sweden, people are gran­ted the human right to be invited to any birth­day party they want. Bur­eau­cracy ftw!

Jok­ing asside, this is a symp­tom of some­thing we’re see­ing more and more; this per­vas­ive idea that people have the right not to be offen­ded. Yes, it’s pretty harsh not to be invited to a party that every­one else is going to, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to go. You have the right to call the kid a jerk for not invit­ing you, and you have the right to recip­roc­ally not invite him to your party, but that’s it. It’s his party and it’s his right to decide who’s invited. It’s a pretty stu­pid, trivial example, but it’s just a symp­tom of the same sort of think­ing that leads people to think they have a right not to have their beliefs chal­lenged or their stu­pid­ity ridiculed. It’s a dan­ger­ous trend, because often one person’s “right” not to be offen­ded is indir­ect oppos­i­tion to someone else’s actual rights. In this case it’s the right of a child to not invite people he doesn’t like into his house, which is import­ant enough, but in more extereme case, it might be someone’s free­dom of speech or of expres­sion that’s being sup­pressed to keep people from being put out, and I don’t care how you dress it; free­dom of speech is more import­ant than anyone’s sensibilities.

So, it went through the Com­mons, after some wheeler-​​dealing, and now has to get through the Lords.

At the risk of sound­ing like someone writ­ing to The Times, I am appalled and dis­gus­ted that it’s got this far. There is no jus­ti­fic­a­tion for hold­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic for so long. A week sounds about right to me, any more than that is simply wrong. Whatever happened to “inno­cent until proven guilty”?

Right now, I’m ashamed that I ever voted Labour, and I never will do again.

This speaks for itself really. How can any­one who claims to stand for free­dom, demo­cracy and human rights, veto a demo­crat­ic­ally passed law that would have pre­ven­ted inno­cent people from being tor­tured? I think we all know the answer.

The guy makes my skin crawl.

I gather this isn’t exactly news, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.

The Lords have just approved the change, by a sig­ni­fic­ant major­ity. I couldn’t be hap­pier; blas­phemy is a ridicu­lous, archaic offence that has no place being enshrined in the law of a civ­il­ised nation. In fact I’ll call it the first good news about the Brit­ish legal sys­tem I’ve heard in a long time.

Turns out that the Sadui author­it­ies aren’t above per­se­cut­ing young men for behav­ing like young men any more than they are above oppress­ing women for being women.

Of course, there is still a dif­fer­ence; I doubt these men are going to be pub­licly beaten for their actions.

I’ll bet Dr Wil­li­ams is taken aback at the response his com­ments has gen­er­ated, and I have to say, I think a lot of people are over­re­act­ing. Obvi­ously, I make no secret of the fact that I dis­agree with him and I’ll argue my point, but heck­ling the poor man out­side his Church? Call­ing for his resig­na­tion? Not even remotely called for, and noth­ing more than an attempt to limit his right to hold an opin­ion and express his views.

At this stage it’s prob­ably worth point­ing out that there are — at least — two sep­ar­ate groups who’re being crit­ical of his pos­i­tion, and it’s not the sec­u­lar­ists and the lib­er­als who’re call­ing for his resig­na­tion. Those voices are raised from within his own Church, and they’re not object­ing on gen­eral grounds to reli­gious accom­mod­a­tion in the law, they’re object­ing very spe­cific­ally to accom­mod­a­tion of reli­gions that aren’t theirs. Need­less to say, I dis­agree with those people at least strongly as I do Dr Williams.

In fact, on a re-​​reading his lec­ture, I real­ise just how badly mis­rep­res­en­ted by the media Dr Wil­li­ams was. I’m not say­ing I agree with him; far from it, but I don’t think he was call­ing for whole­sale modi­fic­a­tion of Brit­ish law, either. He makes some subtle points, and his words are, at times, ambigu­ous (one might say disin­genu­ous,) but there is cer­tainly a way to inter­pret what he said as noth­ing more con­tro­ver­sial than “just because the law gives someone a right, doesn’t mean we should neces­sar­ily force them to exer­cise that right at all times.” That much is obvi­ously true.

So, surely true enough is fair enough? Well, yes, but the assump­tion that someone might not want to exer­cise their rights is a dan­ger­ous one to estab­lish leg­ally, and an even more dan­ger­ous one to nation­ally con­sol­id­ate through the estab­lish­ment of local courts around the coun­try, which (will inev­it­ably) pre­sume the com­pli­city of the entire local pop­u­la­tion. Wil­li­ams talks about these supplementary-​​jurisdictions as being purely vol­un­tary, but offers no sug­ges­tions as to how to ensure duress of any kind does not play a role. Mat­thew Par­ris puts it excel­lently, in his piece in The Times:

Faiths cap­ture people. I do not mean this dis­par­agingly. So of course do pat­ri­ot­isms, ideo­lo­gies, fam­il­ies. But a reli­gion, prop­erly under­stood, makes pro­found claims on an indi­vidual and com­munity, quite unlike the demands of a golf club. It involves the use of pub­lic places and pub­lic ser­vices, the sub­or­din­a­tion of the individual’s will; and may demand that he sub­or­din­ate his spouse’s and children’s wills too. Hence our unease about duress, and the com­plete­ness of “consent”.

Dr Wil­li­ams, in a wel­ter of words, makes no ser­i­ous attempt to resolve this. Those who read his speech prop­erly will see that his entire argu­ment turns upon the free­dom of the group mem­ber to “opt out” of the “sup­ple­ment­ary jur­is­dic­tion” and choose Brit­ish law instead. But repress­ive faith groups make it cul­tur­ally dif­fi­cult — some­times well-​​nigh impossible — for a mem­ber to opt out. This gives them the very togeth­er­ness and focus that Dr Wil­li­ams wants to foster.

A reli­gion is more than a col­lec­tion of rules and habits: it is a com­plete moral and philo­soph­ical sys­tem with deep claims upon the inner and outer life of the adher­ent, from cradle, through school­ing, and bey­ond. The rules it lays down — the private laws — are of a more com­mand­ing kind than the rules of Scrabble or the High Peak Hunt because they are mor­ally joined-​​up: joined with a loy­alty bey­ond the State; joined within an over­arch­ing faith and its explan­a­tions of the Universe.

How can we expect someone who’d been raised, edu­cated and gov­erned accord­ing to cer­tain cul­tural and reli­gious pre­scrip­tions to real­ise, when it mat­ters, that they are able to “opt-​​out” of all that? Every­one they know believes and acts a cer­tain way; they have been raised to do the same. They might not even know there is a wider law guar­an­tee­ing them greater liberty. Paris, char­it­ably, talks about reli­gions as provid­ing “togeth­er­ness” and “focus,” and I dare-​​say he’s right, but the other side of that coin is obed­i­ence, con­form­ity and acqui­es­cence; not traits that I believe will lead to people look­ing out­side the sys­tem for redress.

Put simply, reli­gion and gov­ernance are a bad mix at any level. Reli­gions are, by their very nature, strongly ideo­lo­gical, and strongly ideo­lo­gical gov­ern­ments, reli­gious or oth­er­wise, fall all too eas­ily — some might say, inev­it­ably — into oppres­sion of dis­sent­ing views.

Addi­tion­ally, and as I’ve said before, there are real risks with intro­du­cing even small-​​scale sup­ple­mental jur­is­dic­tions in the con­text of the cur­rent Brit­ish pop­u­la­tion. By grant­ing legal status to aspects of cul­tural codes, we run the risk of grant­ing a ven­eer of legit­im­acy to the entirety of those codes, includ­ing ele­ments that the major­ity find abhor­rent, and by grant­ing already insu­lar com­munit­ies even greater autonomy, we don’t increase social cohe­sion on a wide scale, so much as splinter into a series of small, inde­pend­ent com­munit­ies with little in the way of com­mon­al­ity to bind them into a cohes­ive whole.

The recent ordeal (which I’ve blogged about here and here,) of a young woman who was sen­tenced to state-​​sponsored bru­tal­ity after being gang-​​raped is just one example of the shock­ing bar­bar­ity of the Saudi regime. It is unac­cept­able that the UK counts any nation with such a poor human-​​rights record as an ally, so please take a couple of minutes to sign this peti­tion urging our gov­ern­ment to sever friendly ties with Saudi Ara­bia until such a time as they join us in the 21^st Century.

The actual text you’ll be put­ting your name to is:

The gov­ern­ment have rolled out the Red car­pet to the Saudi Royal Fam­ily yet the gov­ern­ment of Saudi Ara­bia is an auto­cratic regime with an appalling human rights record. Exe­cu­tions, flog­ging and ampu­ta­tions are imposed and car­ried out with dis­reg­ard for the most basic inter­na­tional fair trial stand­ards. ‘Offences’ include being gay or being a woman unac­com­pan­ied by a man or driv­ing a car. Yet with utter hypo­crisy the UK gov­ern­ment con­demns sim­ilar regimes such as Burma and has very min­imal ties with coun­tries like Libya. The UK has turned a blind eye to this for its own selfish eco­nomic interests to the extent that we will break inter­na­tional law on cor­rup­tion to avoid upset­ting the Saudi Royal Fam­ily. As a con­sequence of this rela­tion­ship we are per­ceived as sup­port­ers and back­ers of this repress­ive regime. We have seen the con­sequences of these injustices on the secur­ity of our coun­try. It is now the oppor­tun­ity to restore Britain’s dig­nity and end this stain on our country’s reputation.

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