When does freedom of speech and expression trump the right to respecting people’s beliefs or religion? Are we finally reaching the point where no boundaries remain that we will not overstep? Can we honestly just keep kicking down the fences guarding our morality and then expect people to put up new ones, only to have them trashed the following week?
When I read articles about Muslim women from Pakistan who preferred sharia law to secular law as a buffer against the violence and chaos of modernity, I was slightly taken aback. It meant, to my mind, subjugating themselves, to a greater extent, to a male-dominated society and reversing the trend towards female liberation. Now I’m beginning to understand where they are coming from.
Let’s start with the painting of the Last Supper that was on display in Vienna’s Cathedral and Diocesan Museum. This homoerotic piece by celebrated Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka involves the apostles sprawling over the table and masturbating each other. Needless to say, it caused an outcry among Christians the world over, reminiscent of the furore over the Danish Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
I’m not sure how gay Christians feel about this painting, but I’m sure they would appreciate the fact that it is hardly in keeping with their religion. Like the Danish cartoons, I have to ask myself this question: Who benefits from this? Art? Freedom of expression? When do sensitivity and good sense eventually kick in? Why would you want to trash other people’s beliefs in this way?
To prove that you can?
It’s not as if there is some scientific necessity where religion has to make way for research and developments in the interests of humanity. This is creating and then displaying art on principle — then refusing to take a step back in case it is perceived as giving ground on the right to free speech or expression.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?” (Attributed by some to Voltaire.)
Garbage! That has to be subject to qualification — it is not a licence to do and say whatever you want regardless, thereafter to claim that your particular filth is your view and that you are entitled to publish your opinion. If that were the case, then there really are no boundaries and you are as vulnerable as everyone else to bigotry and worse — in the interest of principles.
If the Muslim and Christian communities are offended by this art, then take a view based in good sense rather than principle. Where a thug is holding a country hostage by refusing to release election results, then finding your voice for something worthwhile is laudable. Freedom of speech or bust is a crock of crap.
In India, we are hearing that a baby girl has been born with two faces. She is being worshipped as a reincarnated god. While many of us are staggered by the medical implications, this does not mean that we have to lose sight of the fact that for some, she is a form of deity. Regardless of whether you believe it is mumbo-jumbo or not, you should have the good grace and sensitivity to respect those beliefs.
One of the great ironies of political correctness is that it leaves far fewer acceptable expressions for us to use, yet we somehow manage to trash everything and everyone from gay people to women and Jews and other religions with far more venom and frequency than ever before.
I would like to say that this Indian baby, and those who see a spiritual light in her, will be treated with sensitivity, but we all know better. She will be on display as some form of aberration and the butt of people’s jokes. Worse, the media, in the best of tastes and all the while using politically correct language, will reduce the baby and these people to some form of Indian hillbillies where incest has run amok.
Nowhere will their feelings or beliefs be spared or respected.
Which brings me to Salman Rushdie, who in response to a fatwa to kill him issued pursuant to The Satanic Verses “pretended to embrace Islam”.
While I don’t propose dealing with the merits or demerits of the fatwa, the fact that he now believes it is time to tell the press that he was only pretending to embrace Islam, in order to overcome the fatwa, leaves me stone cold.
Rushdie milked all the attention that The Satanic Verses and ensuing outrage occasioned. He knew that the book was going to cause anger and resentment but proceeded with it regardless. The result was the British government being saddled with protecting him. In order to take the sting out of it, he “embraced” Islam.
What happened then? Did the publicity die down? So it’s time to restart the anger and resentment? Can one man be that egotistical? Must people repeatedly be placed in danger or die for his right to speak every time he wants a bit of attention?
It does not take the argument any further to claim that religion is bunk and has occasioned many wars that resulted in millions of deaths. More than half the planet have religious beliefs, and ignoring them visits resentment and violence upon us.
People have to start understanding that principles are not carved in stone but act as guidelines that must be tempered by simple common sense and sensitivity. It should not take courts of law faced with actions for crimen injuria or any other right being enforced to make people see sense.
Political correctness is not the art of finding the right words or principles to get to where you want to be — invariably at the expense of others — but rather doing or being seen to do the right thing.
When you are on the receiving end of abuse, you’ll understand why this is how it should be.
A prince with dignity and determination
Prince Ngarambe’s goals are to become Rwanda’s first transgender model and to uplift the country’s youth
The EFF’s principles are unshakeable
Unlike the ANC, the core values of the freedom fighters do not change with each leader it elects
