How freedom goes

Trumpeter Lanfried

I have some sympathy with newspaper and magazine editors whose staff may be at risk if they publish anything some Islamic nutcase disapproves of. It's one thing to be courageous on your own and another thing altogether when you are involving other people.

Jeremy

The first point of entry for all of this was post-war immigration. Everything else - not least the religious, cultural and ethnic schisms which disfigure the country - flows from this.

I must admit that what worried me the most when I read about the Rushdie thing was that it could happen here - that I might be looking at our own future.

Maddy1

Your only way out of this morass is to do something through the UN. with Mecca and Medina once and once and for all! We have spineless, gutless politicians who need to read the memorial on the Cairns, seafront everyday for a year.

Matthew Blott

Well said.

Jeremy what has post-war immigration got to do with this? Can you please expand and tell us how bus drivers from the Carribean, or nurses from Africa posed a danger to our freedom of expression? Perhaps you mean some of those from Muslim countries like Pakistan who came over to work in the textile factories. But you might care to know Pakistan was a far more secular society in the 1940s - Jinnah, Pakistan's whisky drinking founder, wanted his country to be like India is today and had no time for Ghandi partly because he thought he was a religious nutcase. Actually, I suspect you don't really care to know any of that too much.

Ian Walker

All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.

Kennybhoy

Nick Cohen wrote:

"...religious censorship of open debate in Britain..."

Islamic rather than "religous".

Pierino Forno

Ian: spot on!

Robert Iddiols

Well posed, Nick. Again reminded of Hitchens: If you want good people to say and do stupid and immoral things you need religion. What people forget is that this extends to the non-religious also. Liberal-minded, intelligent people still kowtow to every element of religion, from the hokum to the horrific, not necessarily in the name of, but because of religion.

Rhoda Klapp

The test of your love for freedom of speech is not whether people are suppressing the dissemination of things you agree with, but how you feel about free speech for the likes of Martin Webster, or Nick Griffin. The BBC suppresses climate change scepticism/denial. Are they right to do so? How about the way Eysenck or the bell curve guys are treated? It is only in the hard cases that we will find the limits of our tolernace.

richard mullens

In principle I agree with Rhoda - our freedom is being constantly eroded, but I don't think that the BBC suppresses climate change scepticism. Climate change is scientific orthodoxy and to give a platform to the unhinged who peddle nonsense is irresponsible when the viability of life on Earth is threatened.

I also wonder whether free speech for George Galloway and Abu Hanza is supported ? The fact of the matter is that the BBC is not really independent at all.

steve williams

At least the Indian press covers the story. In Britain there is silence

sorry, but this is simply untrue nick. the story got widespread press coverage. you're making up the facts to suit your argument.

Cynic

@richard mullens "Climate change is scientific orthodoxy and to give a platform to the unhinged who peddle nonsense is irresponsible when the viability of life on Earth is threatened." Geocentricity (the Ptolemaic system) was scientific orthodoxy at one time. Any one who doubted it was considered to be the unhinged who peddle nonsense. Science is rarely fixed and settled. Indeed, what distinguishes science from dogma is the need to disprove hypotheses.

mattghg

Kennybhoy, you're completely right.

salieri

I was struck by the phrase "liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims". One category is a contradiction in terms and the other is under automatic sentence of death.

John.

richard mullens: Read "Heaven and Earth" by Ian Plimer, "The Chilling Stars" by Nigel Calder and "An Appeal to Reason" by Lord Lawson and see how wrong as orthodoxy can be and how the actual facts can be suppressed by what amounts to an inquisition.

Chris

I find it an handy rule of thumb that people who can't spell 'Caribbean' and/or 'Gandhi' have nothing useful to say about anything. Thank you, Matthew Blott, for confirming it once again.

richard mullens

John,
How does Nigel Lawson's education in PPE qualify him to speak on scientific matters ?

What part of the following don't you understand:-

Burning fossil fuels generates CO2
CO2 adsorbs infra red - effectively reducing the radiation of heat into space.
The earth warms up.

James

" Islamic rather than "religous"."

Kennybhoy: You're completely wrong.

Remember the actions of Christian Voice and the Sikh extremists in Birmingham when it came to freedom of artistic expression? Of course not.

Granted, Islamic fundamentalists are far more disposed to 'doing something about it', but censorship and stifling the beliefs and ideas of others in the face of their own minority position isn't an Islamic monopoly.

The bishops in the Lords demonstrated just as much yesterday.

Philly RN

Here in the US, we're shocked that the country that we took the idea of free speech from has relinquished it so easily. You can be prosecuted for "insulting Muslims?" How is that even racism? If a Muslim feels insulted, how am I to even know that my belief in equal rights for women, modern family law, free speech in art, print, and the spoken word, upsets him? The views of someone attempting to adhere to an 8th Century worldview are impossible to ascertain. You are already muzzled in Great Britain, but don't realize that tolerance of intolerance cancels it out.

Philly RN

Why do you feel you have to use climate change as a proxy to argue whether free speech on Islam has been stifled in Europe and Great Britain?

Speak about the topic at hand -- the left wants only good rosy things stated about Islam, the rest wants to talk about the people who repeatedly state they want to kill us. If you are not following the news in Muslim countries, not just the Middle East, then you are missing what people are letting you know over and over. Check out MEMRI.org and have a gander. There has not been so much hate speech against the Jews since the rise of Hitler. Tolerating that is not tolerance.

Philly RN

And yes the Indian press did a much more thorough job covering the icing of Salmon Rushdie in a democracy. In the British press, there was a dutiful, cursory mention. In India, there was analysis of what this means in a free society.

Fergus Pickering

Mr Mullens. Do you think only scientists are qualified to speak on scientific matters? Do you also think only religious people are qualified to speak on religious matters. And only political people to speak on political matters. Scientists (I presume you are one) have obviously never been taught to think. They are but rude mechanicals and have to be told what their place is. So shut up.

Andy Carpark

'How does Nigel Lawson's education in PPE qualify him to speak on scientific matters ?'

To quote the man himself, 'I know nothing about climatology but I know a fraud when I see one.'

AY

"as we supported Eastern European dissidents"

LOL

Eastern Europe for centuries had civilized population and cultural tradition indistinguishable from the West.

As opposed to the thousands of years of cave-age tribalism and then stepping directly into modern multi-fascist madness, you know what I am about.

Continue deceiving yourself Nick.

People are only a tip, their ancestors are the spear.

Nothing good will ever come from there.

richard mullens

Fergus Pickering

What part of my argument didn't you understand ? Here it is again:-

1) Burning fossil fuels generates CO2
2) CO2 absorbs infra red - effectively reducing the radiation of heat into space
3) The earth warms up.

When you have grasped that come back, in the meantime shut up yourself.

richard mullens

Andy Carpark.

Thank you - in other words, not at all.

Alex

Richard Mullens - ever heard of the feedback problem? In other words, your attempted syllogism is nonsense. Even the IPCC recognise that some sort of positive feedback mechanism must be at play in order to allow global warming to be valid. The trouble is - so far, none has been found. Strange how climate change got onto this discussion thread on religious intolerance. Then again, maybe not.

richard mullens

Alex,
Of course I'm aware of feedback mechanisms - though most appear to be positive. Your assertion is of course nonsense as reduction of the polar ice cap will make the earth "blacker" and therefore cause it to absorb more of the sun's radiation (as well as radiate more).

In spite of this my "syllogism" still represents the main mechanism for CO2 induced global warming.

Fergus Pickering

Mr Mullens. I did not attend to your argument, merely to your insult to Lord Lawson who probably knows more about everything than you do about anything. I hate people telling me things in a LOUD VOICE. Fortunately I am not at school now. What DO you do for a living?

richard mullens

@Fergus Pickering.
"Livers" had it right when he described you as an "arse".

If you want to find out about me, then look on the internet. There is plenty of information.

richard mullens

Hint:
I'm also richardamullens

Wily Trout

I googled richardamullens and got an obituary.

Hexhamgeezer

RE: Wily Trout @ 1:22pm

Theres a richardamullens Xerox engineer. It must be that one. Sounds scientific.

jean-marie avril

2 dangers on this planet: US Xian fundamentalism and Moslem fundamentalism. There's nothing to choose between the 2 nightmares, nothing to choose between the backwaters of Pakistan and the American Midwest, only containment...

Ken

@Willy Trout: LOL yes I did too, poor fella.

John.

jean-marie avril: Christians don't murder apostates, adultresses or homosexuals. Nor do they murder those who criticise their so-called prophet and/or religion - e.g. Fortyn, van Gogh and advocated murder of Rushdie - or try to impose their religious law on the countries they live in. Neither do they refuse to allow other religions to have their places of worship in their countries or massacre those who practise other religions - too many examples to list here. They don't burn massive libraries such as the library of Nalanda where it took the Muslims three months to burn all the books. Rather a difference I would say.

richard mullens

Catholics and Protestants murdered each other in Northern Ireland.

Jews murder Moslems and vice-versa.

Anerican Fundamentalists (Bush) sent armies to the middle east to kill.

I seem to remember some "pro-life" murders in America. Jean-Marie Avril seems to be right.

Simon Stephenson.

richard mullens

Isn't there a difference between (a)religious differences which are used as convenient cover for a political power struggle, and (b) where the religious ideology itself is the motivating force behind the desire of one group to impose their will on another group? The problems in Ireland, for example, were nothing to do with the ideological supremacy of one religious doctrine over another - they were a revolt against a perceived abuse of majority political power by the descendents of the Ulster colonists. In contrast, the motivation of the likes of Al Qaeda seems much more to be about the religion than about abuse of power.

richard mullens

Simon,
I thought that Al Qaeda arose as a reaction to US hegemony.

Likewise, the Sunni/Shia conflict in Iraq is about the oppression of one group by another.

Pro-life murders don't seem to fit that model though ...

Kieran

Those who wish to shut down free speech, through threats and intimidation, have the ethics of the mafia. And if the Government, through its agencies such as the Police, are not prepared to defend these rights then we are on the road to civilisational suicide. It’s as simple as that.

If the Police isn’t enough, send in the Army.