Archive for September, 2006
Incitement to Murder Outside a Cathedral? Apparently Not, According to Met Police Chief
Posted by David Conway in Civil Liberty, Multiculturalism, Religion on 29/09/2006
Pope Benedict XVl delivered his controversial lecture at the University of Regensburg on Friday 15th September. His lecture was controversial because it included a quotation from a 14th century text that was highly critical of Islam.
The inclusion of that passage ignited massive protests around the world from Muslims who claimed that it had insulted their religion and its founding prophet. In the Middle East, churches were burnt in protest, and, in one north African country, a nun murdered in apparent retaliation for what the Pope had said.
Where there have been demonstrations against the Pope, some have merely demanded that he apologise for having insulted their religion. Others have gone further, calling for the Pope to be killed by way of punishment. Demonstrations of this latter sort arguably verge on incitement.
On the Sunday following the lecture, a widely reported demonstration against the Pope took place outside Westminster Cathedral at which various placards were displayed and slogans chanted that bordered on calling on Muslims to kill the Pope in revenge for including the quotation in his lecture.
This demonstration was well-attended by police who received a score of complaints from those attending the Cathedral service that morning who claimed to have been upset and intimidated by what they witnessed upon leaving it.
Although a spokesman for the CPS is reported to have not ruled out that some prosecutions may result from what was said at the demonstration, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair is today reported as being satisfied none were.
He is reported as having said of the demonstration: ‘We are living in an angry time. It is the job of the Metropolitan Police to hold the line of free speech and it is a difficult line to hold. But in this particular case I am satisfied there were no offences committed by anybody.’
On the Sunday of the demonstration, a Catholic medical student living in London who keeps a blog attended the service in the Cathedral. This is what he posted about the demonstration that same day:
‘My family decided this Sunday to make the trip to Westminster Cathedral together. As we came out about 100 Islamists were chanting slogans such as “Pope Benedict go to Hell”, “Pope Benedict you will pay, the Muja Hadeen are coming your way”, “Pope Benedict watch your back”, and other pretty hateful things.
‘There were about 100 police around and about keeping an eye on things and video recording the protestors. I asked if they’d be prosecuted, and the policeman sounded edgey. He said they’d been warned about their behaviour already but arresting any of them might just fuel them up ever more.’
In light of this personal testimony, backed up by several photographs taken at the time by him and posted along with his account, presumably Sir Ian Blair’s denial that any offences were committed at the demonstration illustrates what sort of policing he had in mind for the capital on appointment when he introduced a new logo for the force which runs: ‘Working Together for a Safer London’.
That this form of policing may result in Rome or elswhere in the world becoming less safe is presumably of no concern to the Met.
Opera Lights Aren’t the Only Form of Illumination Currently Going Out All Over Europe
Posted by David Conway in Multiculturalism, Religion on 28/09/2006
Today’s Times reports senior members of the German government to be critical of the decision by the German national opera to cancel its planned run of a Mozart opera for fear that a recently added coda in which the hero appears brandishing the severed heads of several religious leaders, among whose is that of Mohammed’s, and then announces the gods are dead, might so offend Muslims that they decide to bring the house down in an altogether novel way of registering audience disapproval of a show.
Of course, this kind of self-censorship is deeply regrettable. But under present circumstances, it is hardly unwarranted. Even if the opera went ahead with ‘Caveat Emptor’ warnings stuck on all billboards and tickets, it would still risk exacting reprisals that a theatre company is perfectly entitled to think are not worth taking, even for artistic reasons.
That is just a sign of how badly under threat Europe is now.
The Doped, the Detained, and the Depressed: Reflections on a Public Morality Gone Mad
Posted by David Conway in Crime, Health, Human Rights on 22/09/2006
Should Pete Doherty ever find himself banged up for possessing hard drugs, he would soon discover that incarceration had not remotely put them beyond his reach. This is especially so, should he have been incarcerated north of the border.
According to a report in yesterday’s Times, so easy has it become for inmates in Scottish prisons to gain access to illict hard drugs while inside them, and so awash with drugs have they become, that they are shortly all to be given personal drug-taking kits, complete with syringes, swabs, filers, and a sharps disposal box.
I was only surprised to read that a gram or two of heroin or coke is not be thrown for good measure.
The Pope, the Prophet, and the Peer
Posted by David Conway in Religion on 21/09/2006
In a Times op-ed on Monday of this week, William Rees-Mogg defended Pope Benedict for having spiced up a lecture last week with a quotation describing Islam as a violent religion. Despite recognising the quotation to be offensive to Muslims, Rees-Mogg defended the Pope for including the quotation in his talk on the grounds that the Koran does contain much that Muslims can and do construe to endorse, if not demand, the use of violence in the furtherance of the spread of their creed.
‘Pope Benedict will have done Islam a service’ concludes Rees-Mogg in his piece, ‘if he has started a debate within Islam and between Islam and … critics’.
Can the author of Monday’s defence of the Pope be the same William Rees-Mogg as wrote an op-ed published in the Times last February criticising on grounds of their offensiveness to Muslim sensibilities a Danish newspaper for having published cartoons of Muhammed designed to make the very same point about Islam as that which this week’s Rees-Mogg defends the Pope for having made?
If so, surely, it would have helped regular readers of the Times had Rees-Mogg given some explanation in Monday’s piece of what had led to his apparent change of mind. Or, should he consider this week’s defence of the Pope not at odds with his earlier condemnation of Jyttlands Posten for having published cartoons of Muhammed, to have explained what the morally relevant difference is between these two forms of criticism of Islam.
Pressure from the top
Posted by Robert Whelan in Family, Marriage and the Culture, Religion on 18/09/2006
After a fortnight of concern about the ‘state’ of childhood, the Archbishop of Canterbury has stepped in: to warn us about the huge pressures that children are under. A key strain Rowan Williams highlighted in an interview this morning with BBC Breakfast, was the ‘relentless’ testing children are now subject to, which starts from a very young age. The saddest part of this particular contributor to the nation’s increasingly unhealthy and unhappy children is that it is so needless. Far worse, in fact, it is actually setting back holistic primary school learning, with inevitable effects on pupils’ later school careers. Last week, fresh evidence came to light of the widespread cramming which is now happening in primary schools. Research found that children who had gained the required level in the tests at the end of Year 2, were found to be significantly below that level when tested informally the subsequent year. Tragically, the purpose of this so-called ‘teaching to the test’ was to reach government targets. Pupils under pressure not for their own benefit, in other words, but for party politics’.
An Invitation to Contribute to Our Work
Posted by David Green in Civil Liberty, Education, Politics, Tax and Spend on 16/09/2006
Some deep-seated problems, including high crime, falling education standards, unsustainable immigration, the low quality of the NHS, and rising welfare dependency are not being properly confronted by our political leaders. In particular, political discussion of public services like health and education still seems wedged halfway between the age of collectivism and a more consumer-friendly alternative.
Discussions are taking place across the political spectrum about the next steps and Recalibrating the Right is our contribution. It argues that we need to re-think the guiding principles of a free society, the obligations we owe each other and the traditional values we should uphold in order to discover the beliefs we should embrace in the immediate future. What’s good about our country – and there’s plenty to admire – and what’s gone wrong? How can we come together to fix the problems that our political leaders are afraid to confront? What should be the relationship between a people and its government?
The first chapter sets out the guiding principles for reform and we are publishing it online to give our supporters a chance to contribute to our emerging work. We invite anyone who is interested to contribute their thoughts before the draft is finalised and published as a book. There are two ways to contribute: you can email us at this address or you can comment via this blog.