No religion has the right to escape ridicule

Events at Batley Grammar School, where there have been angry demonstrations against the showing of a cartoon image of the Prophet Muhammad, take me back to the late 20th century. I sat for five years on a government quango called the Broadcasting Standards Council (BSC). Viewers or listeners sent in their complaints about TV or radio and we adjudicated.

Sex and violence featured heavily but the BSC’s diet was eclectic: whether any actual budgie had been upset during the filming of a home-insurance ad depicting the ceiling falling in around the bird’s cage; or whether a drama depicting (without recommending) satanic rituals outraged decent Christians.

The work taught me much about the giving and taking of offence. Especially so in questions of religious faith. That era was rather before Islam entered the news but Christians, especially evangelicals, were often greatly distressed by blasphemous language, insulting references to Christ or any mention of the Devil.

I came to conclude, however, that though the complaint was often couched in terms of our complainants’ own emotional shock, they were seldom mollified by evidence that advance warnings had been given so anybody could switch off. Instead, one sensed that the underlying complaint was that such things were broadcast at all, at any hour, anywhere and to anybody. The complainant’s own feelings of offence were the vehicle for the complaint but not the reason for it.

This week at Batley Grammar, an unnamed teacher is alleged to have shown students (in a school with a majority-Muslim intake) a controversial cartoon image of Muhammad from the French Charlie Hebdo saga, as part of the debate about blasphemy. Much of Islam interprets the Quran as prohibiting all depictions of Muhammad. But as none of us was in the classroom and an inquiry is under way, I cannot judge whether this was well handled by the teacher, though a petition defending him has attracted support from other students at the school.

My concern is different. There is really no need to rehearse disapproval of those mounting that ugly demonstration and louts supporting them on social media. Most of Britain views their attitudes with loathing. Extremist elements in the Muslim community, meanwhile, will have their own views and claim divine authority for their benighted nonsense and we shall not change their minds. The great majority who take a dim view of their bigotry and threats need no further reinforcement, and the education secretary Gavin Williamson is right to call their behaviour “completely unacceptable”.

So let’s take all that as a given. What worries me is that fellow liberals, bending over backwards to distinguish between “extreme” and “moderate” Islam, and (understandably) anxious to keep the “moderates” onside, are conceding too much. They are conceding that giving offence to a person of faith is wrong; that it is unacceptable to insult religion; that young people should be “protected” from voices that might startle or outrage the accepted wisdom they’re being taught by elders and imams.

So carefully are British liberals treading that the debate is slithering from where it should be — about freedom of speech and debate — and on to the issue of “respect”. Is Islam (or indeed Christianity or Judaism) being questioned in an appropriately “respectful” way? Are students (or indeed the adult faithful) being protected from unwarranted shock or hurt? Is the questioning of religious teaching being done in a “polite” or “hateful” way?

Do not go down this road. It will land you in two enormous difficulties.

The first is this. The moment we permit an individual to define “offensive” as “anything that offends me”, all is lost. This runs against the spirit of our age, where there can be “your truth” and “my truth” while the man on the Clapham omnibus has been all but forgotten; but if we let go of the idea of commonly shared truth and reasonableness, we’re sunk.

Language works because words have meanings shared by most. It defines “offensive” according to a general understanding of when it is, and when not, reasonable to take offence. You personally may be offended by a woman wearing shorts. I personally may remain unoffended by a man wearing no trousers. But we must agree that in this country it is not offensive for a woman to wear shorts, while it is offensive for a man to wear no trousers. This has nothing to do with your feelings or mine.

And, as I found on the BSC when reviewing complaints from evangelicals about blaspheming, once a person comes to think that their own (often genuine) offence is a simple final fact, their affront will become sharper, and “offensive” becomes a self-justifying prophecy. I was bewildered yesterday to hear Baroness Warsi say that showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Muhammad caused Muslim children to be bullied as terrorists in the playground. The answer cannot be to outlaw any classroom reference to that massacre as “offensive”. It happened! Students should know it happened.

De-mystification, meanwhile, is among the most powerful weapons against the goose-necked pomposities of religion. One rude joke, one snoop cocked against the arrogance of power, can be worth a thousand respectful arguments. Ask Voltaire. Ask Jonathan Swift. Ask Luther. Bullies hate impertinence.

Which brings me to the second huge danger of locking on to the offence caused to religious people by “disrespectful” attitudes to their faith. Our age is much taken by the evils of “bullying”. People of faith, many Muslims foremost among them but Christians too, are getting wise to the instant sympathy that comes with the “bullying” charge. Victimhood becomes an almost sought-after status.

But who are the greatest bullies in human history? Religions and faiths are among them: doctrines that tell people what to do and threaten them with damnation if they don’t. Why not shift the focus off the supposed bullying of Islam, or “Bible-belt” Christians, and on to the young woman or man with religious doubts: the Muslim girl in Bradford who wants to choose her own husband; the boy in the small-town Deep South who thinks he might be gay. Who are the bullied here? The imams who cry “persecution” because they think their version of Muhammad has been dishonoured? Or the youth at Batley Grammar who is beginning to question the cruel and rigid certainties he has heard in the mosque?

Perhaps that Batley teacher was trying to speak to him, or her, and open minds to another universe in which people can question what they’ve learnt at home, or in chapel, or the mosque or ultra-orthodox religious school. Hurt to those who dare not speak is almost certain to be deeper than offence to bullies with no fear of shouting.

Matthew Parris joined The Times in 1988. He worked previously at the Foreign Office, as Margaret Thatcher’s correspondence clerk and as Conservative MP for West Derbyshire. He was the paper’s parliamentary sketch writer for 13 years and he now writes a diary column on Wednesdays and an opinion column on Saturdays. In 2015 he won the British Press Award for Columnist of the Year. Matthew is also a regular columnist for The Spectator and presents the biographical program Great Lives on Radio 4. He has authored a number of books, including Chance Witness, his autobiography which won the Orwell Prize in 2002.

Deja una respuesta

Tu dirección de correo electrónico no será publicada. Los campos obligatorios están marcados con *