2006-02-07
Been having a very bad week work-wise. Hopefully that’s behind me and I can catch up here.Some ambivalence for you – never meaning to offend anyone of course (and in that maybe I’m being ironic!). I’ve been thinking about this Danish Muslim cartoon business, and also the law that the British government are trying to pass making it illegal to inflame religious intolerance. As there are already laws about incitement of racial hatred and blasphemy, and at a lower level the old Police standard about ‘action likely to cause a breach of the peace’ I just can’t see the point of the new law: it seems like having two shots at the same thing and, as some comedians like Rowan (Mr Bean) Atkinson have been protesting it could be interpreted as saying that no-one is able to make fun of anything religious. Of course the government tell us that no-one will ever be prosecuted unless their humour was really very offensive to someone on religious grounds (which might beg the question what’s the point?), but it does smack of just giving all the other religions their own version of a blasphemy law – normally the preserve of Christians.
But as recent events have shown certain religious zealots are prone to get very offended at fun being poked at their beliefs. That’s the trouble with religion, it tends to make its adherents extremely serious about their beliefs. And it tends to make people intolerant. In Gulliver’s Travels Swift mocked the debate between religions who all believe in a single god as being the same as people debating which end of the boiled egg to open, and as an outsider I do kind of stand back incredulous that so much blood can be shed, and so much anger fomented over how people choose to worship. Why is there such a need to convert, to win people over for Christians? Why do Muslims despise followers of other faiths as infidel?
Part of me says that religious tolerance is so obviously the only way we’re all going to live together – if people could just respect each other’s beliefs and not go out of our way to offend them on religious grounds then we could all get along. And that’s kind of where the government has got to – make it illegal not to ‘respect’ religious belief. But then we get political correctness – we get Christmas referred to as ‘Winterval’ and the cancelling of nativity plays. We get so much respect for fear of offending other cultures and religions that we compromise our own.
So then I get to thinking the problem is really with that whole concept of ‘respect’. Are you really respecting someone if you kowtow to their intolerance? If you agree not to do something you would normally for fear of offending them aren’t you really treating them with subservience rather than respect? Aren’t you tolerating their intolerance? ‘Respect’ is not something that should be expected; it’s something that should be earned. (I’ll sound like an old fogey here but) the attitude of schoolchildren these days seems to be that it is their right to be shown respect regardless of how much effort they make to gain it. ‘Are you disrespecting me?’ is the challenge, as though anything short of complete respect is an insult.
And that seems to be where we are with the Danish cartoon saga. On this occasion it’s Muslims complaining but other religions (including Christianity) make similar complaints. They demand complete respect for their beliefs and traditions and anything short is an insult. How can this be right? How can this be civilised? Where is the respect if you can only see your own point of view and are willing to follow that through with bloodshed? Isn’t it healthiest to tolerate the opinions, even to the point of them mocking you, of people you fundamentally disagree with? We shouldn’t stop making fun of things we don’t understand just because it would offend someone.
So to me religious tolerance is the way to go, but with the added proviso that we should respect other people’s right to free speech in whatever form they want. If I expect people to allow me free to believe what I want, I have to leave them the right to express their disagreement in whatever form they choose.