Mark Steel on the whole west/muslim culture clash i guess you'd call it.

Mark Steel: It's no joke if you're on the receiving end
Nothing makes people cling tighter to their group than if they feel under attack
Published: 08 February 2006

What's the matter, can't we take a joke? That lad in the suicide bomber jacket was only having a laugh. What were people getting so over-sensitive about? Even if you didn't like his gesture, surely you agree with the principle that he should have the right to make it.

If we were clever, instead of arresting him, we'd have defused the situation by offering him a job modelling for a catalogue. He'd soon lose his ability to shock if it was in the winter wear section, with a caption: "Comfy and casual, the polyester twin-zip suicide jacket is fully adjustable, easy to wash and surprisingly cool to ease those inevitable sweaty moments! (This item isn't available on a weekly payment scheme and must be paid for in full before delivery)."

Instead, to the boundless glee of editors and phone-in show hosts, he turned out to be an ex-crack dealer on parole. All The Sun needs now for a perfect week is to reveal he's broken Chantelle's heart as Preston's gay lover, thus destroying his ambition to be leader of the Liberal Democrats.

But it isn't just The Sun denouncing Muslims for "threatening free speech". Almost everyone regarded as vaguely clever has appeared somewhere to confirm that free speech, however unpalatable, is the foundation of etc etc. I expect the Shipping Forecast has gone "Biscay, five rising to eight, a gale that, while I may not like it, I would die for its right to blow. Easterly."

But a debate about free speech is meaningless unless it relates to the society in which things are being spoken. When Goebbels commissioned cartoons of grotesque paedophile Jews, he was exercising free speech. So if you approach the matter as an abstract debating point, we should defend his right to do so. But that's obviously mad. Similarly, it wouldn't have helped much to advise Jews to draw their own cartoons of grotesque paedophile Nazis, saying "Then we'll all be laughing at each other, so isn't that lovely."

But you get the impression that if the academics discussing the matter now had been around back then, there'd have been an edition of The Moral Maze which began "Our first witness is a Miss Ann Frank. Now you've been complaining about some of the images that have appeared recently, but surely if you're not prepared to accept other people's viewpoints you've no right to be in the country."

Because speech leads to actions. The reason we no longer accept golliwogs and black and white minstrels and the joke of throwing bananas at black footballers is because their existence effects the status of black people in society. If it's legitimate to portray an entire race as sub-human idiots, they're more likely to be attacked, abused and made to feel utterly dreadful.

And yet the debates about the reaction to this Danish cartoon have almost all ignored the position of those who feel most threatened by it. Nothing makes people cling tighter to their social group than if that group feels under attack.

For example, although I come from Kent, I feel little compulsion to be Kentish. But if Canterbury was flattened by the most powerful armed force for harbouring weapons that turned out not to exist - and an army occupied the place and nicked the cathedral - and a heavily armed state bulldozed the West Bank of Maidstone - and anyone from Dartford to Margate was viewed with suspicion and hundreds were held in camps without trial - and the whole of the West screamed that Kent wasn't democratic but then we held an election and they screamed "No you're not allowed to vote for them, that proves you're all terrorists" - I'd be down with my brothers in the Folkestone ghetto, singing folk songs about the green fields of Swanley and kneeling five times a day to sip Shepherd Neames and pay homage to Wat Tyler.

And in those circumstances, a cartoon of Kentish heroes such as Christopher Marlowe or spin bowler Derek Underwood being buggéred by a dog would take on a different meaning than if someone drew them now.

In context, irrational ideas can make sense. Muhammad Ali followed a branch of Islam that believed white people were descended from devils that had been specially bred by an evil doctor, and that one day a giant spaceship would arrive to rescue the righteous black people. So on the face of it Ali was a nutcase. But a glance at the segregated society he was brought up in is enough to see that at the time this could seem perfectly logical. Such bizarre beliefs can only be countered if the basis for them is acknowledged.

Or maybe the whole episode will end peacefully when the lad with the suicide bomb jacket appears in court and says, "But in my defence your honour, it was Halal crack," and everyone gets the joke and has a good laugh.

Mark Steel on Iraq

Mark Steel: The wonderful creativity of the British Army
They're turning out these videos on resources that Pinewood couldn't have managed
Published: 15 February 2006

Many people complain about the decline of the British film industry, lamenting how we now make only a handful of films each year. But give credit to the Army, they're turning them out on meagre resources that Pinewood could never have managed.

With humility, the Government and heads of the Army play down this creativity, claiming the latest video is a "one-off". But if you were doing something you felt was uniquely outrageous, would you say, "This could get us in real trouble, so to make sure it never gets out, let's make sure we film the whole thing from start to end."

The footage gives the impression that this sort of incident is part of the culture. There certainly isn't anyone yelling, "Put that camera away, you tosspot." On the contrary, the commentator is enjoying it so much you wonder whether the way it got leaked was he sent it to Kirsty's Home Videos, to be shown with Kirsty chuckling: "This chap looks like he's in 'Shia' agony. Oh well, some plans just go to 'Iraq and ruin'," followed by a clip of a dachsund getting tangled in a deckchair.

Or maybe he sent it off as a showreel in a quest to become a war correspondent. In the hope that one day he could gasp: "Behind me are the hills in which the rebels are based, and I can hear the crackle of anti-insurgency missiles being fired by government agents. Wooor look at that one go, he's on fûcking fire, waheeeee, burn you scum. This is Terry Pinkhurst, the Gahobi mountains, BBC News."

Every week something exposes the nature of the occupation, increasing the majority of people in Britain and America wishing it would end. So a number of prominent figures, such as Menzies Campbell, are saying they too think the troops should leave, but we shouldn't set a date for this. Instead we should wait until we've got the institutions in place that can take over.

Which sounds reasonable, until you realise that in effect this is no different from the solution proposed by President Bush. To suggest we should wait until we've sorted everything out before leaving means waiting until everything's sorted on Bush's terms. And you get a sense of those from the details emerging about the Coalition Provisional Authority, set up when the Americans first arrived. For example, Order 39 decreed that 200 state-owned enterprises could be sold to US companies. Not surprisingly, these included oil, so the occupying forces then spent over £11bn of Iraq's oil revenue, £5bn of which has never been accounted for. Much of it went the same way as the million dollars revealed to have been whisked away in a duffle bag by officials as a bonus for awarding a lucrative security contract.

Nonetheless, it would be foolhardy to set a date for leaving until we've finished what we started, and taken out all the country's money in duffle bags.

Maybe Menzies Campbell could suggest speeding the process up, by using binliners - or hiring a skip.

It's also claimed that the occupying armies are essential to the process of bringing the communities together. Maybe this means the British Army shouldn't leave until they've tortured the same number on the other side to even things up.

The politicians insist there's a great deal of rebuilding under way, and towns such as Fallujah certainly need rebuilding. I'm not sure of the exact figures, but maybe each year we rebuild up to a quarter of the things we demolish in the first place, in which case we need to stay a long time yet before we've finished.

Having said that, we're not capable of completing a football stadium on time when there's not an insurgency, so the rebuilding argument seems very flimsy.

The latest poll in Iraq, carried out by Maryland University, suggests that 87 per cent of the population, including 64 per cent of Kurds, want a date set for the troops to withdraw. Which hints that they see the troops not as part of the solution, but part of the problem. Given that they were sent for a reason that turned out to be a lie, killed up to 100,000, and the institutions set up so far have robbed the place, they may have a point.

Or perhaps they don't know what's good for them, and the occupation should only end when the problems caused by the occupation have been solved by the occupation. In which case there should be a change in the law of arson. When an arsonist is convicted, the judge should say, "You have burned down half the street. Well, I may not have thought it wise to start burning down the street, but now you have, it is only common sense you don't stop until you've burned down the rest. After all, we can't just set a date for you to stop, as that would mean leaving the street in the most dreadful mess. Off you go."

Hello all

Been a little busy and the the steady flow which had to descended to a trickle recently has all but stopped in the last few weeks. I'm only sitting down at the PC just now to look into cross London transport, but taking the oppurtunity to check my email i found a couple of Mark Steel columns emailed to me, so in a move of seemingly dubious legality i'll just pinch them and republish them in their entirety and not for the first time either, oh the dangerous thrills life has in store eh. There quite big though so i'll go off just now and put them in separate posts and i can pretend i'm being dead busy.

I think...

...that the madness surrounding the protest of cartoons containing the images of Mohammed is pretty mental, i think it shows that my last post about the programme that made the point that religion is the root of all evil seems not to far from the truth.

Anyway, after struggling to rearrange my thoughts on the matter i've decided just to paste this from the Independent.

Mark Steel: Isn't hell punishment enough for blasphemers?
Surely it's immoral not to ridicule a religion that refuses to allow anaesthetics
Published: 01 February 2006

This is what I don't understand about this law to protect religion from those who are horrible to it. If the worshippers are right, those who mock them will pay with an eternity in hell - isn't that punishment enough?

And even if it isn't, will a £200 fine on top make all the difference? Perhaps God is an Ann Widdecombe type, seething that "in these days of do-gooding liberals, those who ridicule me get off with perpetual agony in soulless spiritual misery, which hardly acts as a deterrent at all."

If I were God, I'd be quite insulted by this new law. I'd reckon if my followers couldn't stick up for themselves they should find a different hobby. When God felt threatened by sinful men he used wrath, destroying Sodom or, if things were really bad, flooding the entire planet.

The Bible doesn't say: "And God looked down upon man's wickedness, and he saw that they worshipped false gods and took his name in vain. And God said: 'That's really hurtful, actually. You know I'm really sensitive at the moment, I haven't even smited anyone for four and twenty days.' And God did feel in need of a hug and that night did eat much chocolate."

And a law that makes it an offence to "stir up hatred" against a religion will be complicated, because the most hateful people about religions are other religions. Every religion regards the worship of other gods as one of the greatest sins. For example, the Jewish religion celebrates the feast of Purim, which commemorates the charming incident when "the Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and they did what they pleased ... they killed 75,000 of them." So, does celebrating the massacre of 75,000 people with different beliefs count as religious hatred? Or have they decided it's not worth bothering unless it gets to 80,000?

Every major religion has massacred in order to dominate a region, such as in the Crusades or the slaughter at Amritsar. And they all use brutality to impose themselves on their captives, as the Romans did to the Iceni, sparking Boudicca's revolt, or the British Empire did to enforce Christianity on millions of slaves. And to be fair, they have to be this strict. You can hardly have a religion that says: "And God spoke unto his prophets, for he saw they were tempted by other idols. And he said: 'Look, that's fine, I mean, basically we're all the same. Me and Vishnu are so alike we get mistaken for each other half the time'."

So if the law is to be upheld, all religions will become illegal for stirring up hatred against other religions. Take the Jehovah's Witnesses, who reckon there are only 144,000 places in Heaven and they've already nabbed them all. Unless it's like the Make Poverty History gig in Hyde Park, and some of the lucky winners have put their ticket up for sale on e-Bay. In any case, surely it's immoral not to ridicule a religion that refuses to allow anaesthetics or blood transfusions because they interfere with God's will? Perhaps they have a special award every year in which their leader announces: "This year's prize for dying from the most easily preventable disease goes to Mrs Jackson, who managed to pass away from a splinter. And her family can take great comfort from the fact she died in screaming agony. And the word is that God is absolutely delighted."

The irony is that, behind this law to prevent "stirring up hatred" against believers, lies a genuine religious insult. It was devised as a means to win back credibility which the Government had lost among Muslims due to the war in Iraq. So Blair should be made to follow it through. As soon as it becomes law, he should announce that locking up Muslims without trial on the word of George Bush, supporting US behaviour at Guantanamo Bay, and helping to splatter a Muslim country on a premise that turned out to be entirely bogus, all come under the category of "stirring up hatred". So, to set an example, he's going to start off by arresting himself.

Complications like this must have got to him, which is why the law has been amended a number of times, so it now reads: "For the avoidance of doubt, a person is not guilty of offence under this part of being reckless as to whether religious hatred would be stirred up if he is reckless as to whether hatred would be stirred up against a religion, religious belief or religious practice but is not also reckless as to whether hatred would be stirred up against a group of people defined by reference to religious belief or lack of religious belief."

So does that mean you can call Jehovah a cock-sucking whore or not?