Anyone outraged by Labour MP Tahir Ali calling on the government to introduce blasphemy laws has clearly not been paying attention, for there are already blasphemy laws in this country, writes Stephen Daisley for The Spectator. He continues:
In March 2023, a 14-year-old boy was suspended from school in Wakefield after a copy of the Qur’an was ‘scuffed’. So great was the indignation that his mother eventually went before the local mosque, her sinful hair covered, and pleaded for her son’s safety.
In this country, we’re tough on blasphemy and tough on the causes of blasphemy. Just ask the Batley Grammar School teacher who faced protests from Muslims in March 2021 after he included an illustration of the Prophet Mohammed in a religious studies lesson. Well, you could ask him, except he’s apparently rather fond of his head and so has been in hiding ever since.
In fact, such is our zero-tolerance approach that we even punish Muslims who say or think the wrong thing about matters theological. In June 2022, cinemas across the UK pulled screenings of The Lady of Heaven, a historical epic telling Islam’s story from a Shia perspective, which did not go down well with elements of Britain’s overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population. Mosques lobbied cinemas not to show the film, crowds of Muslim men gathered outside movie theatres, and Islamic website 5Pillars published a review denouncing The Lady of Heaven as ‘pure, unadulterated sectarian filth’ and warned of ‘tensions’. (I always wondered what Pauline Kael would have sounded like from behind a burqa.)
While it might be jarring to secular ears to hear a British-born Labour MP propose the re-introduction of blasphemy laws, Ali is simply representing a section of his constituents.
A poll in March found that 52 per cent of UK Muslims favour ‘making it illegal to show a picture or cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed’ at some point in the coming 20 years. Reassuringly, the same poll showed a stout 23 per cent opposed to the implementation of sharia. If nothing else, it would save on the hassle of finding a new Archbishop of Canterbury.
Elements like Ali are an embarrassment for secular progressives, who are full-throated in their imprecations against Christianity but rather quieter when it comes to Islam. Note the Prime Minister’s response to Ali’s suggestion that English criminal law was needed to protect the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Sir Keir said:
‘I agree that desecration is awful and should be condemned across the House. We are, as I said before, committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division, including Islamophobia in all its forms.’
Not a word about ancient British liberties, freedom of expression, or indeed any indication whether or not Sir Keir is minded to bring in such laws. The Prime Minister is too progressive to allow himself to disagree with a religious reactionary. This is exactly the problem: men like Sir Keir – weak, cowardly men – have thoroughly surrendered their reason to identity politics and the reality-throttling postmodernism that undergirds it. Thus does an authoritarian’s membership of a favoured group trump any objection to his authoritarian agenda. This is what comes of seeing people not as individuals but as the embodiment of one ‘community’ or another, to be treated according to the state’s relationship with their identity group rather than on their own personal merits.
Worth reading in full.
