.... They’re of course right that informed and polite discussion of the truths or falsities of different faiths would not be “Islamophobic” in the APPG’s sense. But in religion, as in much else, rational argument is not the only way a belief can be cut down to size.
Mockery has always played a big part in knocking priesthoods off their pedestals. Religion rules, at least in part, by inspiring awe and fear. Satire, ridicule, even abuse are potent in smashing the mystique. Read Voltaire’s Candide — or indeed listen to Anna Soubry saying that Nigel Farage’s facial expressions made him look like “somebody has put their finger up his bottom and he really rather likes it”.
We already have laws against race hatred, and we have courts to sniff it out, even when disguised as religious commentary. But if Islam is to be cut down to size — as, being a rationalist atheist, I think it should be — then free, fierce, even contemptuous dissent from faith-based orthodoxies must never be stifled.
MPs were right to abolish the crime of blasphemy against Christianity in 2008. They should be on guard against the return of this thinking, clad in the robes of another faith. [The Times (£)] Read more
