An author writes a short piece of fiction about a man’s sexual experiences and fantasies. The newspaper which carried the story is banned and the police interrogate the editor who published it. Some commentators defend the ban, condemning the author of the story and its publisher. Supporters of the ban hold that the story is ‘blasphemous’ and object to the behaviour of the fictitious character. While the paper is suppressed and the editor is questioned by the police, other opinion columnists remain suspiciously silent on the whole affair.
A few weeks later, another man states that he vigorously supports religious laws which lay down that mutilation is ‘deserving punishment’ for thieves and that the death penalty is a just punishment for practicing homosexuals. Oddly, some commentators who rushed to condemn the author of the story don’t utter a word of criticism in this case while those who preferred to keep mum over the newspaper ban say that the second man may have been ‘misunderstood’, inviting us to put his words in a wider historical, theological and political context.
It’s all a bit odd isn’t it? Disturbing, in fact, is probably the most appropriate term. Think about it: an individual who publishes a descriptive story faces a term of imprisonment and faces harsh criticism while a man who unequivocally claims to be in full agreement with a piece of explicitly prescriptive literature (in the sense that the quoted text orders or encourages extremely radical action against certain minorities), is afforded – to put it mildly – rather more cautious treatment by the critics.
At this stage, I’m going to do a bit of quoting myself as I also happen to be a big fan of putting things in context. And just like man number two and others of his ilk, I will resort to higher authority to do that. Here’s the British philosopher A C Grayling offering us a possible explanation for this strange state of affairs:
“It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect, and that it should be handled with kid gloves and protected by custom and in some cases law against criticism and ridicule. It is time to refuse to tiptoe around people who claim respect, consideration, special treatment, or any other kind of immunity, on the grounds that they have a religious faith, as if faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither...
“It is time to demand and apply a right for the rest of us to non-interference by religious persons and organisations – a right to be free of proselytisation and the efforts of self-selected minority groups to impose their own choice of morality and practice on those who do not share their outlook.
“Doubtless, the votaries of religion will claim that they have the moral (the immoral) choices of the general population thrust upon them in the form of suggestive advertising, bad language and explicit sex on television, and the like; they need to be reminded that their television sets have an off button. There are numbers of religious TV channels available, one more emetic than the next, which I do not object to on the grounds of their existence; I just don’t watch them.” (1)
I apologise for the longish quote. But at a time when religious claims, symbols and laws appear to be grabbing headline after headline, it’s certainly worth getting some perspective by considering what the experts (on either side of this particular fence) have to say rather than attempting to reinvent our home-grown wheel at every twist and turn.
(1) A C Grayling Against All Gods - Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness
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