Mick Hartley

A good article in the Times from Michael Coren, an Anglican priest:

The only way to the truth,” said the Catholic American novelist Flannery O’Connor, “is through blasphemy.” Could someone please send her books to Sir Keir Starmer, because his response to the Labour MP Tahir Ali this week was as puny as it was disturbing. The backbencher asked: “Will the prime minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?”

Rather than explaining that the right to question or mock religious faith was a fundamental right in any free society, and that even a hint of a blasphemy law was anathema to our way of life, the prime minister said with consummate passivity: “Desecration is awful, and I think it should be condemned across the House. We are committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division including Islamophobia in all its forms.”

Starmer’s supporters have described his answer as “reasonable under the circumstances”; those circumstances presumably being that November is Islamophobia awareness month and that Tahir Ali’s Birmingham constituency is majority Muslim, a voting bloc the Labour Party can’t afford to lose.

But is such desecration “awful”? I’m an Anglican priest — I certainly oppose it. And at its worst, as with Nazi book-burning, it can be a precursor to something far worse. But my concern is for people rather than objects, and the hideously ironic truth is that people are killed in the name of a similar religious fundamentalism that would introduce blasphemy laws.

It’s too glib to blame all of this on conservative Islam. Death for blasphemy has a history in ancient Judaism and not-so-ancient Christianity. But today, the worst that would happen if a Bible were burnt would be a few angry demonstrators and a guest appearance on a comedy special lauding atheism….

I realise that the Koran holds a unique place in Muslim theology and consciousness, and that behind textual destruction can be racism and hatred. But without freedom of speech there can be no authentic freedom of religion, which at its best demands an informed and often challenged acceptance. God forbid we ever lose the right to blaspheme.

Most recommended comment:

Hear hear. As an Orthodox Jew I have no right to demand someone else respects my religious beliefs

Or indeed me. I have a right to practise my beliefs without harassment. Not without judgement.