Thursday, February 12, 2009
Arguing against intolerance is hard. Can't we just ban it?
Oh great. The powers that be in my country, ever committed to freedom of speech, have detained far-right Dutch MP and general asshole Geert Wilders at Heathrow and deported him after he decided to try and face down a ban from the Home Office. The prohibition on his entry was due to his comprehensive opposition to Islam and a short film in which he brands the Koran a "fascist book". He had been invited by a UKIP peer in the House of Lords, but the Home Office, instead of permitting him to present the film to those that invited him and perhaps face some of his opponents, felt that his opinions were a threat to public security. (psst, don't worry guys, it's on YouTube!)
There might be a (small) case in favour of the public security angle, and those struggling for a more tolerant world would justifiably be up in arms with peers in the British parliament meeting this creep. But we can't go about pre-empting every obnoxious individual for fear of how others will react to their words and thoughts by banning them outright. And blacklisting someone who has an axe to grind with the Islamic faith while allowing Muslim preachers with extremist views like Yusuf al Qaradawi in is rather uneven (putting aside the fact that Ariel Sharon, Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premiers Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, all mass killers of Muslims, have had state visits).
Speaking of muzzling unpalatable opinions, I'm trying to follow the logic displayed by our unwanted guest. I'm briefed fairly well on Mr Wilders, so I'm familiar with his toxic opinions on how he wants Muslim immigrants out of Holland. But crying freedom of speech while trying to get the Koran banned seems odd for reasons so obvious that I must be missing something:
1. Dutch people can convert to Islam if the mood takes them. You can't deport them "back where they came from" and they can download the Koran from the internet. Why ban it?
2. He claims he doesn't hate Muslims, only Islam. I sympathise - I hate music but love singers, I love the taste of chicken but hate having to eat it. What exactly should these Muslims be reading if they want to keep their religious identity without troubling the thought police? The Ladybird Book of World Faiths? 101 Fun Things for Muslims to do on a rainy day?
3. The Bible is also stuffed with hateful, cancerous, genocidal statements of religious, racial and gender-based discrimination. It hasn't been rewritten, we simply take for granted that your average Christian will extract a reasonable set of core values from the stories inside and skirt around the bits where undesirable tribes are wiped out simply for never having heard of God. The enlightened European atmosphere I believe I live in doesn't exist because the Bible has given us greater moral values, but because when fans of that particular book have come into conflict with enlightened, humanitarian values they have either yielded to them or been left behind. Is this not possible with the Koran, bearing in mind that young people living in Iran of all places are frequently found to be progressive and accommodating to so-called Western values?
4. Does he want all references to Mein Kampf (again, available on the internet) banned too, what with it being a fascist book? Does reading it make one a fascist, or could it be that mere books are the wrong target here?
Life is dull when you have nothing to read: Geert Wilders, who apparently lives in the Black Lodge
from Twin Peaks. I would hate to see him get angry
By trying to ban intolerance my government has waded into Geert Wilders' soiled waters and shown an unsettling degree of inconsistency. Now, wouldn't it suck if this uneven treatment stirred some rusty Conservative battleaxe to write some piece-of-shit article laden with ugly innuendo? You know, the type that get on their high horse every time Muslims or Arabs seem to be getting preferential treatment. The sort that would take one troublesome news story and gaffer tape it to some other pet peeves in order to fashion an almighty rant. The kind that think that The West is in moral decline, sleepwalking towards cultural suicide, all the while urging it to rain bombs on far away lands. It certainly would suck.
It certainly would
"MUSLIMS? 7 FOOT HIGH MUSLIMS?? ON MY LAWN?? Let me use my freedom of speech to cry: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGGHHH!!!"
Oh great. The powers that be in my country, ever committed to freedom of speech, have detained far-right Dutch MP and general asshole Geert Wilders at Heathrow and deported him after he decided to try and face down a ban from the Home Office. The prohibition on his entry was due to his comprehensive opposition to Islam and a short film in which he brands the Koran a "fascist book". He had been invited by a UKIP peer in the House of Lords, but the Home Office, instead of permitting him to present the film to those that invited him and perhaps face some of his opponents, felt that his opinions were a threat to public security. (psst, don't worry guys, it's on YouTube!)
There might be a (small) case in favour of the public security angle, and those struggling for a more tolerant world would justifiably be up in arms with peers in the British parliament meeting this creep. But we can't go about pre-empting every obnoxious individual for fear of how others will react to their words and thoughts by banning them outright. And blacklisting someone who has an axe to grind with the Islamic faith while allowing Muslim preachers with extremist views like Yusuf al Qaradawi in is rather uneven (putting aside the fact that Ariel Sharon, Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premiers Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, all mass killers of Muslims, have had state visits).
Speaking of muzzling unpalatable opinions, I'm trying to follow the logic displayed by our unwanted guest. I'm briefed fairly well on Mr Wilders, so I'm familiar with his toxic opinions on how he wants Muslim immigrants out of Holland. But crying freedom of speech while trying to get the Koran banned seems odd for reasons so obvious that I must be missing something:
1. Dutch people can convert to Islam if the mood takes them. You can't deport them "back where they came from" and they can download the Koran from the internet. Why ban it?
2. He claims he doesn't hate Muslims, only Islam. I sympathise - I hate music but love singers, I love the taste of chicken but hate having to eat it. What exactly should these Muslims be reading if they want to keep their religious identity without troubling the thought police? The Ladybird Book of World Faiths? 101 Fun Things for Muslims to do on a rainy day?
3. The Bible is also stuffed with hateful, cancerous, genocidal statements of religious, racial and gender-based discrimination. It hasn't been rewritten, we simply take for granted that your average Christian will extract a reasonable set of core values from the stories inside and skirt around the bits where undesirable tribes are wiped out simply for never having heard of God. The enlightened European atmosphere I believe I live in doesn't exist because the Bible has given us greater moral values, but because when fans of that particular book have come into conflict with enlightened, humanitarian values they have either yielded to them or been left behind. Is this not possible with the Koran, bearing in mind that young people living in Iran of all places are frequently found to be progressive and accommodating to so-called Western values?
4. Does he want all references to Mein Kampf (again, available on the internet) banned too, what with it being a fascist book? Does reading it make one a fascist, or could it be that mere books are the wrong target here?
Life is dull when you have nothing to read: Geert Wilders, who apparently lives in the Black Lodge
from Twin Peaks. I would hate to see him get angry
By trying to ban intolerance my government has waded into Geert Wilders' soiled waters and shown an unsettling degree of inconsistency. Now, wouldn't it suck if this uneven treatment stirred some rusty Conservative battleaxe to write some piece-of-shit article laden with ugly innuendo? You know, the type that get on their high horse every time Muslims or Arabs seem to be getting preferential treatment. The sort that would take one troublesome news story and gaffer tape it to some other pet peeves in order to fashion an almighty rant. The kind that think that The West is in moral decline, sleepwalking towards cultural suicide, all the while urging it to rain bombs on far away lands. It certainly would suck.
It certainly would
"MUSLIMS? 7 FOOT HIGH MUSLIMS?? ON MY LAWN?? Let me use my freedom of speech to cry: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGGHHH!!!"
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