Another good day for free speech

Last July, a court rejected a libel case against a Danish politician who had accused some Islamic Faith Community members of treason when they travelled to the Middle East to publicize a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

This blog hailed it as a good day for free speech. Well today was yet another good day for free speech as the cartoon that sparked violent protests was reprinted today.

Danish Muhammad cartoon reprinted

Danish newspapers have reprinted one of several caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad which sparked violent protests across the Muslim world two years ago.

They say they wanted to show their commitment to freedom of speech after an alleged plot to kill one of the cartoonists behind the drawings.

Campaigners for freedom worldwide should rejoice at the move by the newspaper, which was emulated by national television and other newspapers also showing the cartoon. The editor's say that they will always remain defiant:

"We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend."

It is good to see that the over-the-top p.c. madness has not reached every newspaper in the world!

Do You Laugh Or Cry?

Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?

Well, obviously, no. But that doesn't mean we should ban the classic fairy tale Three Little Pigs or its digital retelling, Three Little Cowboy Builders, does it?

Unless, of course, you're a politically correct government agency paranoid that Muslim fanatics are about to burn down your building or call for your death. In which case, you would be quite right to be concerned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues" and would be "too offensive" to the Muslim community.

As the book's creative director, Anne Curtis has said, does that mean that secondary schools can not teach Animal Farm because it features pigs? Once again, it is quite clear that some religions animals are more equal than others.

Source: BBC

The Christianophobia Debate

Amidst the latest findings that four fifths of schools are not staging Nativity plays this year, the now common practice of rebranding Christmas as Winterval / Winter Lights / Celebrity Lights, and perennial reports that another council has ordered the removal of a wooden cross from a crematorium chapel over fears of giving offence, Conservative MP Mark Pritchard has called a Westminster debate tomorrow on Christianophobia, suggesting that attempts to move Christian traditions to the "margins" of British life have "gone far enough" and that the "politically correct brigade" run the risk of Christianity being hijacked by extremist parties.

Some have questioned whether this is a proper use of Parliamentary time, but perhaps the debate should be broadened to consider the extent of the Christianophobic problem in countries of our allies, such as Saudi Arabia (with whom, you'll recall, we supposedly enjoy so many shared values), where the government continues to bar Jews and Christians from bringing items such as Bibles, crucifixes and Stars of David into the country, threatening to confiscate them on sight; or Turkey, whom we are told should be allowed to join the European Union, despite continued attacks against Christians within its borders.

Conspiracy Of Silence

Last night's Ten O'Clock News had a good report on the rise of neo-nazism in Russia, including an interview with Nikolai Kuryanovich, a member of the extreme nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and deputy of the State Duma. Unfortunately, it left the viewer with the impression that ill-feeling towards the "ten million foreigners" who have moved to Russia in recent years is only to be found in the country's equivalent of the BNP. However, the truth is that Central Asians, such as the Uzbek they interviewed who had been beaten up for being "dark-skinned filth" (a rather tame translation of regular abuse that is actually as harsh and inflaming as was "filthy n****r" in America), were always treated as second-class citizens in the former Soviet Union and, as economic migrants today, continue to be harassed and exploited by both the authorities and population at large. Anti-Turkic, anti-Muslim, anti-Western, and even anti-Georgian or anti-Ukrainian stereotypes dominate the mainstream, Kremlin-controlled media.

I say that not simply to point fingers at the racist attitudes endemic in another country, but to question to what extent race has been allowed to subvert a proper and reasoned debate over immigration here† and to question whether we are aware of the ways that our attitudes towards "outsiders" are shaped by our own positive perceptions of national identity and expression of national pride. I am conscious that these are inconvenient questions that the politically correct might like to brush aside, but they are ones on which our elected representatives cannot afford to remain silent.

† Consider, for instance, the recent over-reaction to comments made by Nigel Hastilow, the now former Conservative parliamentary candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis, who observed:

"When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most people say immigration. Many insist: “Enoch Powell was right”. Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 “rivers of blood” speech warning that uncontrolled immigration would change our country irrevocably.

He was right. It has changed dramatically. But his speech was political suicide. Enoch’s successors in Parliament are desperate to avoid ever mentioning the issue. It’s too controversial and far too dangerous. Nobody wants to be labelled a racist. Immigration is the issue that dare not speak its name in public."

Muslim Desecration Silence

I am willing to bet that if a Christian leader had incited 500 villagers to invade the local mosque, plaster dung on its walls, and cut the loudspeaker wires to prevent the call to prayer from being heard, Muslims worldwide would be in uproar and every newspaper front page would have covered the story. If the Christian leaders had subsequently been forced into signing a humbling apology, again, we still wouldn't hear the end of it as the incident would continue to be raised for months afterwards.

That you probably have not heard any report of just such an incident carried out by Muslims against a church in Pakistan, goes to show the difference in treatment given by the media to the two religions and puts last week's Common Word letter in context.

Muslims Apologize After Desecrating Village’s Christian Church

Muslims have submitted a written apology to Christians in a place called Gowind on October 12; two days after about 500 Muslims stormed New Apostolic Church in this village near the India-Pakistan border.

Shouting slogans against Christians, the Muslims cut the loudspeaker wires and plastered dung on the walls while 20 Christians were at an evening prayer service. They were protesting the church’s use of its own loudspeaker to broadcast its morning service. Muslim clerics then issued calls over mosque loudspeakers for a “social boycott” of Christians.

However, three Muslims — Daler Khan, Haji Yaseen Gardor and Tariq Mehar — signed the apology at the local police station while another 100 Muslims stood outside. The apology states : “We apologize to the Christians for desecrating the church and hurting their religious sentiments.”

Source: Le Journal Chrétien

Stupidity in Practice

"One day we will all wake up to the namby-pamby, politically-correct approach that for economic reasons seems to be adopted to save the police paperwork - instead of letting them get on with their jobs."

Jailing a serial thief who stole a pensioner's purse, but was given just an £80 on-the-spot fine after committing an identical offence two years earlier despite a string of more than 30 previous thefts, Judge Timothy Nash has condemned the Government's policy of on-the-spot fines:

"The issue of a penalty notice ticket for the criminal offence of shoplifting as a device is stupidity in practice. It means, not infrequently, that people don't have their difficulties addressed by a court, which is better able to deal with shoplifters than anybody issuing what is in effect a parking ticket."

The judge thus maintains that, in sparing almost 200,000 offenders every year the humiliation of a court appearance, Labour's policy is unfair to the community and leads to offenders not getting help from the courts. But then, as we have discussed before, this Government appears to think criminal justice is solely about punishment and seems completely closed to the possibility of transformative justice. In Labour's Big Brother world, transgressors are to be punitively controlled, not reformed, let alone helped back to the point where they can make a positive contribution to society.

A Good Day For Free Speech

The politically correct would maintain that nobody should be permitted to offend Muslims. A Danish court has today judged in favour of common sense:

Muslim group loses cartoons libel case in Denmark

A Muslim group lost a libel case on Friday against the leader of a Danish anti-immigrant party who had accused its members of treason for publicizing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

A court ruled that Pia Kjaersgaard, leader of the Danish People's Party (DPP), did not libel the Islamic Faith Community when she accused some of its members of treason for traveling to the Middle East to publicize a Danish newspaper's publication of the drawings, which caused a worldwide uproar in 2006.

The court said the term "treason" was not libelous because it was used extensively in public debate. It ordered the plaintiffs, a loose network of Danish Muslim organizations which says it represents 50,000 members, to pay Kjaersgaard 40,000 Danish crowns ($7,400) in costs.

The court's decision is in line with a similar verdict reached in France earlier in the year (see Islamophobic or Anti-fundamentalist?) However, a disappointed spokesman for the Muslim group threatened to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that first published twelve cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in September 2005 that provoked outrage among Muslims, if it did not receive an apology from the paper.

Prisons Need Inner Change

Earlier this week Lord Falconer announced that as many as 25,000 prisoners will be released early due to prison overcrowding in England and Wales, as though this will somehow help the Government to be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime."

The fact is Labour has failed when it comes to crime: Our prison population is now the highest in Western Europe (having doubled since 1993, approximately 147 people out of every 100,000 are now in prison in England and Wales) and two thirds of prisoners are reconvicted within two years of being released. Just last month the Lord Chancellor told the Probation Board Association, "The challenge we face is that of how to turn the offender into the citizen ... by giving people a future to follow, they can leave their past behind," yet it seems every month we hear about another prisoner released on licence who has gone on to rape or murder.

What a pity then that politically correct concerns about diversity last year forced the closure of a voluntary pilot project called "Inner Change" in Dartmoor Prison. The programme, discussed briefly on the Today programme just after eight-thirty this morning, originated in the States and is accredited with reducing reoffending from 55% to just 8%.

The problem with the programme, for all its potential and promise of success, was it didn't satisfy this Government's liberal agenda. It was criticised by the Prison Service's Area Psychologist, who thought its belief that "the root of offending is in individual sin" "lacks basis in specific scientific research" and its promotion of the virtues of heterosexual marriage was "discriminatory."

In this Orwellian society in which we now find ourselves, I hadn't realised that NewLabour had introduced a form of NewSpeak, where "tough" means "reckless," "diversity" means "uniformity," "tolerance" means "intolerance," "inclusive" means "exclusive," and "multi-faith" means "anti-Christian." Once again, I find myself wondering whether our whole approach to justice is fundamentally wrong.

Equally Discriminating

I realise this post risks being somewhat controversial but, never one to sweep issues under the carpet, here goes...

The primary school governing body that I'm a part of spent this morning discussing the Disability Equality Duty, which requires schools to take a more proactive, explicit and comprehensive approach to promoting disability equality and eliminating discrimination not only among disabled pupils, but disabled staff, parents, and other users of the school. As with much rights-based anti-discrimination legislation, I was left with a feeling that we ought to be promoting equal rights for all, not singling out any particular minority groups, however worthy their individual causes or however strong their claims—be they disabled, homosexual, women, Muslim, Asian ... or, dare I echo The Blunderer, even white, middle-class, heterosexual, Christian men(!)

For a start, not all minorities are easily defined. It seems even the male/female distinction is not as simple in these enlightened days as one might used to have thought. When it comes to disability, this is especially true. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 defines a disabled person as someone who has "a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities." For the sake of entitlement to employment rights, this seems to encompass a multitude of people who wouldn't normally dream of describing themselves as disabled, including those suffering from asthma, severe allergies, and back problems. Indeed, a report from the Cabinet Office two years ago, Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People, indicated that an estimated 11 million adults and 772,000 children in the UK are disabled — equating to 24% of the adult population and 7% of all children. Yet, employers are in no position to assess an individual's overall level of relative disadvantage, so no wonder many of them are put off by the politically correct language of disability. I know one employer who took on two disabled applicants for positions, knowing full well that the applicants wouldn't be able to do the jobs they were applying for and even posed a potential health and safety hazard, but didn't feel able to turn the applicants down out of fear that they would be accused of discrimination ... In both cases the disabled workers quickly realised they were not made for the jobs and moved on, but it needn't have turned out that way.

Others claim that "a disabled person is not disabled by their impairments but by a society that does not provide the environment to allow equality." So, depending on who you listen to, either we're all disabled or nobody is disabled, it's just we're all prejudiced. However, perhaps this route has greater potential. A universalised disability right could be incorporated into more general equality legislation. An example of this can be seen in Norway, where employers are bound by the Work Environment Act to provide employees with a safe environment at work and the scope for personal and vocational development and self-determination. Guidance to the Act suggests that the general regulations regarding the design of the working environment are of particular benefit to disabled people, but no definition of disability is provided. Thus people with a disability (however one wishes to define that) are provided for, but so is everyone else, thus eliminating the need for individuals to prove their disability status if they are to exercise their rights and also reducing the danger of discrimination—positive or negative.

I suggest that this would be a fairer way forward for everyone, for we are all individuals and nobody's identity should be defined by their membership of or exclusion from any class or category. Instead of responding to the complaints and grievances, be they real or perceived, of minority groups, anti-discrimination measures should focus on positive duties to introduce equality measures. As the Shadow Attorney General wrote in Reclaiming our civil liberties, in the current issue of The Difference, making the case for a modern, British Bill of Rights: "'Rights' and 'liberties' will no longer be a tool for those striving for special privileges but a protector of all and a reminder of the duties that we all owe to each other."

Corruption of the Curriculum

The school curriculum has been corrupted by political interference, traditional subject areas have been hijacked to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment and anti-racism, and teachers are now expected to help to achieve the government's social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students.

Coming just a day after the General Teaching Council called for all national curriculum tests to be scrapped, these latest claims condemning the Government's approach to education are made by the independent think-tank Civitas in a new publication, The Corruption of the Curriculum. Examples they cite include:

• The whole tradition of English poetry from its origins to 1914 is represented by just sixteen poems while modern poetry has three times as many...A British pupil can go through the school system and get the top marks in English and English Literature without knowing that Spenser, Milton or Pope ever existed.
• "New History" lacks any sense of narrative or chronology and is taught through a filter of politically correct perspectives
• Geography has become a vehicle for teaching global citizenship, with environmentalism as its central theme
• The government's new science curriculum conflates the three disciplines of chemistry, physics and biology into "scientific literacy," which has more to do with media studies than hard science as students are asked to discuss issues such as global warming and GM crops, based on media coverage, and to consider whether or not scientists can be trusted.

The report also claims that by encouraging students to "Think global, act local" the national sphere of political action to solve problems is missed, misleading young people because "there is no world government, nor global body for citizens to hold to account."

Warning that an educational apartheid is opening up between the experience of pupils in the state sector and those at independent schools, which have generally held on to traditional approaches to teaching, the authors claim we need to:

1. Depoliticise education: "Politicians need to be discouraged from regarding the curriculum as their platform for making statements"
2. Challenge the tendency to downsize the status of knowledge and expose the destructive consequences of "anti-elitist education"
3. Take seriously the ability of children to engage with knowledge and provide them with a challenging educational environment.

What do you think? Do your experiences (or those of your children) shed any light on this issue?

The Rise Of Islam

"Not long before the British surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown in 1781, assurances were still being given in parliament that ‘so vast is our superiority everywhere that no resistance on their part is to be apprehended’. Today, with not even Baghdad secured after over four years of war — and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars — the White House still talks in terms of a ‘victory’ over ‘extremists’ and ‘killers’, even if the delusion that a Jeffersonian democracy can be created in Mesopotamia appears to have been abandoned."

Drawing parallels between George Bush's war in Iraq and George III's war against the American colonists, David Selbourne argues in The Spectator that "the American imperium has entered on its decline after only some six decades" and that it is now "the turn of Islam to assert itself, for the third time in history, across large swaths of the globe."

If he is right, then not only is it imperative that we in the West should understand the contribution of Christianity to Western culture, but we also need to understand Islam and the differences between moderate Islam and fundamentalist Islam, or Islamism.

One of the principal differences between Islamism and Western democracy is in their approach to academic scrutiny. Like the predominant threat against our Western ideals throughout much of the last century, namely Communism, Islamism is intolerant of dissent, looking to and justifying its ideas and beliefs on the basis of an ultimate authority that cannot be questioned. By contrast, ideas in the West are accepted by submitting them to public inspection.

For Islamists, truth and knowledge are thus not to be discovered through open criticism and public enquiry but are represented by the revelation of God to the prophet Mohammed as recorded in the Koran and supplemented by the record of Mohammed's actions and sayings. As far as such Muslim fundamentalists are concerned, Western society is corrupt and weak because it is different from, and therefore inferior to, the perfect society described in their Scriptures – one that dictates, for instance, inequality between men and women and between Muslims and non-Muslims. By denying the equivalent of the separation between Church and State that allowed Western society to flourish, they promise those who accept their worldview not utopia in this life but paradise in the next and promise their martyrs a certain salvation that is unavailable in Islam by any other means.

You may recall a year or so ago when producers of Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great at the Barbican censored references to Islam in order to avoid the risk of a violent backlash from Muslims to the playwright's scenes in which the hero burns the Koran and says that Mohammed is "not worthy to be worshipped" and "remains in hell." Such censorship was not only a victory for political correctness over common sense but a defeat in our attempt to defend the Western tradition of freedom in the ongoing clash of civilisations that is the wider stage upon which the so-called war on terror is being conducted.

Countries such as Indonesia prove to the world that Islam is able to embrace the concept of individual liberties, such as freedom of expression. We whose societies are founded upon the freedoms imparted by our Christian heritage need to engage constructively with such moderates, seeking to understand their faith from their perspective, if we are to prevent the freedoms that are the building blocks of our way of life from being increasingly eroded over the coming years.

Poverty or Race?

Mr Blair claims that recent violence is "not a symptom of a broader social malaise and should not be treated as part of a general crime wave." Instead he blames London's spate of knife and gun murders on a distinctive black culture and says people have to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence will not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it."

The Prime Minister may be right in maintaining that "what we are dealing with is not a general social disorder but specific groups or people who for one reason or another are deciding not to abide" by society's codes of conduct. And he is surely right when he implies that we have all taken political correctness too far. However, is he also right to dismiss any connection with other factors?

Home Office minister Lady Scotland clearly thinks not, as just last month she told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture. The chair of the National Black Police Association also thinks not, saying "Social deprivation and delinquency go hand in hand and we need to tackle both."

What do you think?

The Challenge Of Freedom

"Racism is the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade."
That was the challenge from James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, at this evening's Wilberforce Address, made all the more powerful by the presence on stage of the 18-member-strong gospel choir The Tribe Of Judah, who had just moments before been leading a celebration in praise of freedom, to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave-trade.

He concluded his address by saying the country needs a new generation of men and women who can provide moral and political leadership.

David Cameron also spoke, answering questions during a mini "chat show" that what we need is not apology for a past generation's wrongs, but to learn from our shared history. He added that while it is right we should feel great shame for Britain's role in the slave-trade, we should also feel great pride in our role in bringing it to an end. He also noted that it is not political correctness for the Conservative Party to want to see more black and ethnic minority candidates in Parliament - it is a simple recognition of the need for role models in all walks of life.