Nick Cohen, on offensivity

(Earlier offensivity-related posts, here)


After at least 100 deaths and the storming of Danish embassies in Syria and Iran, journalists pointed out that the newspaper hadn't included a picture of M Barrot among the innocuous cartoons it had run to uphold the right to mock religion. The clerics then said an anonymous poison pen writer had sent the wounding picture to a Danish Muslim. It was, they added, an insult to their faith as great as Ayaan Hirsi Ali's championing of the rights of Muslim women.

Too many people forgot too quickly that the violence of 2005 did not have as its 'root cause' the decision of a small Danish newspaper to satirise the godly. For three months after Jyllands-Posten published, there was no rage from the 'Arab street' or any other street. Only after lobbying from the imams and sly political calculation from the powerful did the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) unleash the protests by demanding that the UN impose sanctions on Denmark. Like the Reichstag fire and Sergei Kirov's assassination, the cartoons controversy most suited those who affected to be most outraged. (Read the rest, here)

More on Muslim Offensivity:

Hard upon the heels of this report, comes this report:

A postcard featuring a cute puppy sitting in a policeman's hat advertising a Scottish police force's new telephone number has sparked outrage from Muslims.

Tayside Police's new non-emergency phone number has prompted complaints from members of the Islamic community.

...Tayside Police caused uproar in the Muslim community after they released this advertisement featuring police puppy Rebel sitting in a hat... because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.

Dundee councillor Mohammed Asif said: 'My concern was that it's not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards.

Offensivity

I've written about this irrational construct, whereas it is perfectly all right for some people to refer to Jews as apes and pigs but totally unacceptable for others to point out irrationalities and other incongruities in the Islamic mega-narrative known as the Quran.

Example:

"...al-Azhar is a university practicing institutional apartheid. The institution is banned for Jews and Copts, not only the department of theology, but also medicine, economics and agriculture. And speaking about offending religious sensibilities: al-Azhar has shown no willingness to abandon the part of the sharia providing Muslims with the obligation to insult non-Muslims’ religious feelings, while at the same time insisting that non-Muslims offending Muslims’ religious sensibilities should be punished."

Mick, a master in minimalist commentary, provides the goods, here:

"The editor and publisher of a top English-language Indian daily have been arrested on charges of "hurting the religious feelings" of Muslims.

The Statesman's editor Ravindra Kumar and publisher Anand Sinha were detained in Calcutta after complaints.

Muslims said they were upset with the Statesman for reproducing an article from the UK's Independent daily in its 5 February edition.

The article was entitled: "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?"

It concerns the erosion of the right to criticise religions.

In it, the author, Johann Hari, writes: "I don't respect the idea that we should follow a 'Prophet' who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him."

Mr Kumar and Mr Sinha appeared in court on Wednesday and were granted bail.

Angry Muslims have been demonstrating in front of the offices of the Statesman since its republication of the article.

Police have broken up the demonstrations using baton charges several times this week.

Here's Johann's original article. It's worth a read.":

"Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone – and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.

Here’s how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states have successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets.” Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists – of all stripes – have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be “respected” – by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of “adulterous” women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are “religious” issues, and it is “offensive” to talk about them."

Offensivity: The saga continues:

No sniffer dogs near a Muslim

The most recent innovation in the attempted dhimmification of Britain:

Police sniffer dogs trained to spot terrorists at railway stations may no longer come into contact with Muslim passengers – after complaints that it is against the suspects’ religion....

In the Muslim faith, dogs are deemed to be spiritually “unclean”. But banning them from touching passengers would severely restrict their ability to do their job. The report follows trials of station security measures in the wake of the 2005 London suicide bomb attacks. In one trial, some female Muslims said the use of a body scanner was also unacceptable because it was tantamount to being forced to strip.

British Transport Police last night insisted it would still use sniffer dogs – which are trained to detect explosives – with any passengers regardless of faith, but handlers would remain aware of “cultural sensitivities”.

A short while ago I was pretty startled to read this:

The "trial" here involved a London hair salon owner named Sarah Desrosiers and an aspiring stylist, Bushra Noah, whose interpretation of her Muslim faith requires her to wear a headscarf at all times. Ms. Noah applied for a job. In their one brief meeting last year, Ms. Desrosiers decided that her refusal to show any hair wouldn't fit the trendy, "alternative" image that her Wedge salon in King's Cross seeks to project. Patrons and passersby, by her reasoning, like to see where their stylists' tastes run to – in Ms. Desrosiers's case to a dyed pink and blonde do on full display while she works.....

You can guess what happened next. Ms. Noah took her to court.....

... the tribunal still decided that Ms. Desrosiers must pay £4,000 in punitive damages to Ms. Noah – a sum, she says, that puts her small business in jeopardy. Why? It found a novel crime: Ms. Desrosiers was guilty of "indirect discrimination" and causing Ms. Noah "injury to feelings."

A few months ago I was incredulous when I read this:

Hospital beds of seriously ill Muslim patients are to be turned to face Mecca as part of changes aimed at helping patients uphold their Islamic faith.

Dewsbury District Hospital in West Yorkshire will also provide Halal meals and make changes to shower facilities.

Staff at the hospital will take part in training sessions to teach them how to help patients with their faith worship.

A Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust spokeswoman said it wanted to improve its service for Muslim patients.

And there was this story.

And these stories.

I wouldn't care much about these stories. After all, if Britain wants to sink into third-worldism, it's her own business. But I worry because Canadians like to emulate the Brits, angst-ridden as they are about their proximity to their nearest neighbour. So we have a pretty energetic attempt at "reasonable accommodation" here, and some great solicitous compassion for the extreme fragility of Muslim sensitivities. As can be witnessed in the Levant's and Steyn's respective brushes with Canadian Human rights Regulation. More articles, here (French).

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Continues here.

Offensivity:

Another story about Muslim demands for being compensated for hurt feelings and discrimination,

Via: The Iconoclast

DEARBORN -- Two Muslim women say that a McDonald's restaurant refused to hire them, and insulted them during job interviews because they wear traditional Islamic dress.

Toi Whitfield, 20, of Detroit and Quiana Pugh, 25, of Dearborn sued McDonald's, the owner of the local franchise and its unidentified manager in Wayne County Circuit Court on Thursday. Their representative said they are considering filing civil rights complaints with the federal and state governments.

"I applied for the McDonald's position maybe two weeks ago and he simply (told me) I had to make a choice and remove my hijab, or I would not be able to establish employment there," Pugh said.

"When I walked away, I was definitely hurt by it and disturbed. I was confused that it could happen here in Dearborn, with so many Muslims," she said.

I was wondering about the choice to apply for a job at McDonald's which serves not only non-halal beef meat but also bacon. After all, there was this issue of delicate religious sensibilities being offended not too long ago by the idea of touching pork products:

Some Muslim cashiers had declined to scan products such as bacon because doing so would conflict with their religious beliefs. They would ask other cashiers to ring up such purchases, or some customers scanned the items themselves.

Offensivity

Three little pigs:

Once upon a time there were three little pigs and the time came for them to leave home and seek their fortunes.

Before they left, their mother told them " Whatever you do , do it the best that you can because that's the way to get along in the world.

The first little pig built his house out of straw because it was the easiest thing to do.
The second little pig built his house out of sticks. This was a little bit stronger than a straw house.

The third little pig built his house out of bricks.

One night the big bad wolf, who dearly loved to eat fat little piggies, came along and saw the first little pig in his house of straw. He said "Let me in, Let me in, little pig or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!"

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin", said the little pig.

But of course the wolf did blow the house in and ate the first little pig.

The wolf then came to the house of sticks.

"Let me in ,Let me in little pig or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in"

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin", said the little pig. But the wolf blew that house in too, and ate the second little pig.

The wolf then came to the house of bricks.

" Let me in , let me in" cried the wolf

"Or I'll huff and I'll puff till I blow your house in"

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" said the pigs.

Well, the wolf huffed and puffed but he could not blow down that brick house.

But the wolf was a sly old wolf and he climbed up on the roof to look for a way into the brick house.
The little pig saw the wolf climb up on the roof and lit a roaring fire in the fireplace and placed on it a large kettle of water.

When the wolf finally found the hole in the chimney he crawled down and KERSPLASH right into that kettle of water and that was the end of his troubles with the big bad wolf.

The next day the little pig invited his mother over . She said "You see it is just as I told you. The way to get along in the world is to do things as well as you can." Fortunately for that little pig, he learned that lesson. And he just lived happily ever after!

Dhimmi Watch: Three Little Pigs is offensive to Muslims

"The use of pigs raises cultural issues." Indeed. Many cultural issues. And questions of cultural suicide.

"Three Little Pigs 'too offensive,'" by Sean Coughlan for the BBC News (thanks to PRJ):

A story based on the Three Little Pigs has been turned down from a government agency's annual awards because the subject matter could offend Muslims.

The digital book, re-telling the classic fairy tale, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues".

The awards which rejected the book are run by Becta, the government's educational technology agency.

The judging panel also attacked the book's stereotyping of builders.

The two red highlighted sentences are more or less equal in their stupidity.

I have a question:

Jews are forbidden to eat pig's meat. Their ban on pigs has been in place much longer than the Islamic ban. How come we never hear of Brits showing any public solicitude whatsoever, ever, about Jewish anti-pig sensibilities?

Does anyone have a plausible answer?

How about this here:

Sid Waterman: Jews... you know what they are like... they only sniff the slightest whiff of antisemitism and they start writing letters ...

Offensivity

Jesus and Mo in conversation.

(H/T: Will, a drenched Trot)

A strange endorsement

British Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing finds a novel and unthought of reason why Obama should not be elected president:

"Obama...would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him,"

He needs to be protected from his own aspirations, and who better to do that than Hillary, "a very sharp lady. It might be calmer if she were to win, and not Obama".

As if I needed one more proof that writers really should stick to their fiction-making. When they try to import their imaginative faculties into politics, they tend to reveal their own intellectual limitations, which is always such a disappointment to a devout reader. I have to admit, though, that I've never read any of Ms. Lessing's books, so I'm not really equipped to compare her political savvy with her literary merit. I do know, however, that if I were an American who has just voted for Obama, as many millions other Americans have, I would feel very insulted by this imputation or by this ploy.

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Jogo, a guest poster on Bob From Brockley, expostulates (copied from comment):

Too bad Rowan is married. He and Doris Lessing would make a fine pair. An eccentric follie à deux, so wonderfully English. (DL might as well be English, WTF's the difference?)

"They" will kill him. Who is "they?" "They" is Dorris Lessing's nightmare/projection of America. How dare DL say something like this -- implicitly standing on her Nobel Prize authority to speak as an oracle? Especially to a European newspaper whose readers, like most Europeans, are the equivalent of spectators at a rural Sicilian Punch & Judy show when it comes to America. Doris Lessing ... phooey. Her anti-apartheid CV won't save her. Every decent person of her time was against apartheid, but they don't get a chance to parade it like she does. Neither her CV nor her Prize are insulation against being thought stupid and wicked. As if a Nobel Prize winner can't possibly be stupid and wicked.

And yes, one is wicked to make such a prophecy.

Remember Margret Drabble and the Acid Reflux? What is it with these communist women? You [i.e. Bob] seem to have a soft spot for communists. Well, I do not. The only excuse for being a communist is youthful folly. After that, one is treated as an adult. An adult who believes in fairy tales, and is willing to see millions of people die for his fantasies.

*******

(And about the Archbish:)

So, Rowan spoke to the wrong audience at the wrong time in a wrong manner. Well, doesn't that alone disqualify him as a leader? Leaders aren't supposed to do that. Rowan might as well have said "bring it on." In fact, he did say that. And he got it. Full in the face.

Rowan's vision of England is a kind of Alexandria. Well, that might have been fun in 300 BC. But you know what happened in 641 AD.

_________

So, CC's readers may wonder, what happened in Alexendria in 641 AD?

Here is a short history, culled from Wiki:

Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC

… Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and for some centuries more, was second only to Rome. It became the main Greek city of Egypt, with an extraordinary mix of Greeks from many cities and backgrounds.[1]

Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism but was also home to the largest Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced there. …. In 115 AD Alexandria was destroyed during the Jewish-Greek civil wars which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it. In 215 AD the emperor Caracalla visited the city and, because of some insulting satires that the inhabitants had directed at him, abruptly commanded his troops to put to death all youths capable of bearing arms.

In the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by newly Christian Romans had reached new levels of intensity…

In 616, Alexandria was taken by… Persia. Although the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius recovered it a few years later, in 641 the Arabs, under the general Amr ibn al-As during the Muslim conquest of Egypt, captured it decisively after a siege that lasted fourteen months.

As you see, nothing has changed much in the civilized centres of the Western world: political satires evince menacing offensivity and dreadful violence, the Arab Muslims are still jousting for power, and the Jews are still fighting for their right to exist...

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And they may also wonder about the Drabble reference. Well, here it is:

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.

Which proves, yet again, how right Harold Bloom was when he observed in his book "The Western Canon" that novels were always wiser than their writers. If a novelist is wiser than his/her fiction, he/she should be doing something else, not write novels. As we see in the two examples here, if Lessing and Drabble really confined themselves to writing fiction, we would never find out how morally illiterate they actually are.